Media Mikey – is he avoiding Lomachenko?

[JayE]

You're getting me wrong. I'm not saying he is ducking Loma only because he is 'going' to fight Spence, I'm saying he is ducking Loma because Robert was so woolly when he was talking about a fight with Loma. 'Maybe' 'At the end of the year....' Loma is a fight that can happen NOW. Loma wants it, Arum is on board, there is nothing stopping this fight from happening other than Garcia's team being reluctant. Fighting Spence gives him an out because (and this is me being cynical) he'll go up in weight and then he can claim that he can't come down to 135 again and Loma will have to meet him at a catch weight or not at all. This is really dumb because Loma is at the same weight as him now. Why not fight Loma, a fighter who is already in the same weight class AND then fight the monster Spence at the higher weight class. Nope he'd rather chase the monster than fight Loma. It doesn't make any sense unless Garcia is trying to avoid fighting Loma.

And yeah losing to Loma who is a smaller fighter will look bad on Garcia who wants to be one of the P4P greats. For P4P it's never good to lose to someone smaller than you.

You both are starting from the position that Garcia doesn't want to fight Lomachenko. Another way of looking at it (and, just as you're both doing, this involves a lot of primarily baseless guesswork), is that the Lomachenko fight is going to be there, win or lose against Spence. If he lost to Lomachenko, there is no way he'd get the Spence fight, whereas he can lose to Spence and still have the Lomachenko payday. He'll also have the payday against the WBSS winner at 40. If he's going to fight Spence, now would be the time, especially considering Lomachenko already has a fight signed.

This is all guess-work, which I think is a bit of a waste of time as I'm not privy to the negotiations, exactly what he stands to earn from each fight, what he actually wants out of his career, etc.. What I do know is that I'm not going to fault an unbeaten fighter rated in the top 5 p4p for going up two classes to fight a killer like Spence. Seeing a duck in this situation either involves greatly overthinking things, assuming you know everything that goes on behind the scenes, and/or viewing things through a considerably pro-Lomachenko lens. If I had to guess, I'd say we will see the Lomachenko fight at some point and I'd guess there is a reasonable chance it happens at 2019, regardless of whether or not Garcia fights Spence.

 

[aries]

You both are starting from the position that Garcia doesn't want to fight Lomachenko. Another way of looking at it (and, just as you're both doing, this involves a lot of primarily baseless guesswork), is that the Lomachenko fight is going to be there, win or lose against Spence. If he lost to Lomachenko, there is no way he'd get the Spence fight, whereas he can lose to Spence and still have the Lomachenko payday. He'll also have the payday against the WBSS winner at 40. If he's going to fight Spence, now would be the time, especially considering Lomachenko already has a fight signed.

This is all guess-work, which I think is a bit of a waste of time as I'm not privy to the negotiations, exactly what he stands to earn from each fight, what he actually wants out of his career, etc.. What I do know is that I'm not going to fault an unbeaten fighter rated in the top 5 p4p for going up two classes to fight a killer like Spence. Seeing a duck in this situation either involves greatly overthinking things, assuming you know everything that goes on behind the scenes, and/or viewing things through a considerably pro-Lomachenko lens. If I had to guess, I'd say we will see the Lomachenko fight at some point and I'd guess there is a reasonable chance it happens at 2019, regardless of whether or not Garcia fights Spence.

That I agree with. That's why he is 'ducking' a Loma fight now. He isn't guaranteed a win vs. Loma despite being the bigger boxer. He is genuinely fearful of losing to Loma. But what struck me about the Robert Garcia video was that they don't seem to be wanting a fight with Loma at all, at least not in 2019. There is plenty of time to fight Loma after getting a beating from Spence. 2 fights in one year is not a big ask but for some reason, Robert was making all sorts of negative noise about it happening in 2019. That's why I think they don't want a Loma fight at all. We'll see what happens but I'll be very disappointed if Garcia doesn't fight Loma in 2019. Everything is in place, it just needs Garcia to sign up to get this fight done.

 

[JayE]

With the Garcia/Spence fight confirmed, can we agree to put this question to bed at least until after the fight?

 

[aries]

With the Garcia/Spence fight confirmed, can we agree to put this question to bed at least until after the fight?

Yeah sounds good to me. Garcia will have no excuse then not to get a Lomachenko fight signed up. He'll have 9 months left of the year to agree a deal on a Lomacheno fight.