Danny Garcia’s Continuing Boxing Quest Began as a Kid With His First Trophy

It began for Danny “Swift” Garcia, as it does for many, with the presentation of a small, inexpensive trophy. He was 11 years old then, a kid of Puerto Rican heritage from a Philadelphia neighborhood full of them who wanted to take possession of something, anything, that would make him feel as if he might actually turn out to be someone special.

“Winning my first trophy motivated me to keep fighting,” said the three-time former world champion, now fully grown at 30 but still seeking objects, like another bejeweled belt, to validate himself as he prepared for Saturday night’s Showtime-televised confrontation with another former world champ, Shawn Porter, for the vacant WBC welterweight title at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. “I wanted more trophies. All my friends had trophies – football trophies, basketball trophies. I never had no trophies. So I was, like, `Damn, I need some trophies.’

“Then I went from one trophy to 20 trophies to 50 trophies and maybe 40 medals. I was traveling around the world. I had never even gotten on an airplane until I traveled for boxing. My first time to ever get on an airplane, I was going to Kansas City for the Silver Gloves. That alone was like a dream come true.”

It has been said that boys with toys strive to continually achieve because enough is never enough. There is a television commercial now airing for a luxury car favored by successful people who have been upgrading their rides since furiously pedaling their first bicycle. And so it is for Garcia (34-1, 20 KOs) and, one might presume, Porter (28-2-1, 17 KOs), another 30-year-old from Las Vegas, by way of his native Akron, Ohio, who took pride in his first childhood trophy and has been obsessively adding to his collection ever since.

Garcia and Porter are both trained by their fathers, longtime boxing guys who correctly figured that all it took was a little encouragement at the right time to make their sons become as infatuated with the sport as they were.

“It’s not about the money at that age,” Angel Garcia said last week at the DSG Gym in the Juniata Park section of Philly before putting Danny through his training paces. “It’s about that little trophy.”

But the money is a pretty strong incentive as a fighter becomes older and has the financial wherewithal to enjoy the fruits of his labors. The Garcias, now men of property, own a block of businesses in their neighborhood and are wealthier than they ever could have imagined when a beaming Danny brought home that first little trophy. Not that he’s Floyd Mayweather Jr.-rich, but, as with the case with drivers of that luxury car featured in the commercial, enough is never really enough, not when a fighter still has the talent and, well, drive to keep pushing to take full advantage of his physical gifts before they inevitably begin to wane.

“My goal,” Danny told a media assembly, “is to get this belt, have another big unification fight at 147 and then I want to go up to 154 and win a title in a third weight class.”

It that continual quest for more – more money, more fame, more glory, more embellishments of a legacy still under construction – that spur Garcia onward now. He can afford to take a longer view, to a time when all the hard work will have paid off in a manner that supersedes anything that went before.

How about an appearance on the stage of the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y., where a then-retired Danny Garcia will be giving an acceptance speech that will officially certify him as a boxing legend?

“That’s my ultimate goal,” he said. “I visited there once, before I fought in a Golden Gloves tournament. It would definitely be another dream come true. I think this fight puts me that much closer.”

But the road from that first little trophy to now, even with all he has gained for himself to this point, can seem like a short skip and a hop compared to the heavy lifting that still must be done on the obstacle-strewn trail from now to what passes for ring immortality. The great middleweight champion Marvin Hagler once observed that it’s difficult for a rich and accomplished fighter to get up before dawn to put in his roadwork when he goes to bed wearing silk pajamas. Garcia understands that rationale, although, as he wryly noted, “I don’t wear pajamas.”

“Some days I wake up and I say, `I want to do this,’” he said of the rigors of training. “Other days I wake up and I say, `I don’t feel like doing this.’ It all depends on how I wake up that day. But I always find a new motivation, a new goal. Whenever I feel that I no longer have the passion for it and don’t want to work hard and push myself to go in a hot gym, that’ll be when I stop.”

For Garcia – and his pop, too – fresh motivation arrived in an XXXL-sized package after Danny relinquished his WBC welterweight title on a split decision in a unification matchup with WBA champ Keith Thurman on March 4, 2017. Not only was it the first professional defeat for Garcia, it was also the first time he no longer could call himself a world champion since he won the vacant WBC super lightweight title on March 24, 2012, with a unanimous decision over Mexican standout Erik Morales – who, incidentally, was inducted into the IBHOF earlier this summer. It was as if Garcia had lost the most cherished part of his identity, or a thief in the night had entered his home and scooped up all mementos of his boxing successes, even that first little trophy.

“It was tough,” he said of his frame of mind after the loss to Thurman. “I’d be lying if I told you it didn’t affect me a little bit. But I have the mind of a winner. Waking up that day, I thought I was going to be unified champ of the world, WBC and WBA. I was real confident when it came to scorecards that I was going to win the fight because I finished strong. I pushed the fight and I thought I won by a point or two. But it didn’t go my way.”

For the always-excitable Angel, it wasn’t so much disappointment as anger. He is convinced that his son – who, truth be told, had won a couple of fights that were close enough to have conceivably gone the other way – was the victim of poor judgment or, worse, bias.

“I ain’t  gonna lie, I couldn’t sleep,” he said of the restless nights for him that followed the Thurman fight. “We had lost before, in the amateurs, but it was the amateurs. You brush it off and keep it rolling. But that fight … I felt crushed. I felt betrayed by the politics of it. People don’t know the business that went on with the (New York) commission. I was messed up for months. I wanted a rematch the next day. We still want Thurman. We gotta give him an `L,’ man. And I want Danny to give him his first loss.”

Settling the score with Thurman is also objective No. 1 for the younger Garcia, but it might be an even more indeterminable wait than it already has been. Thurman has not fought since his close victory over Garcia, in which he suffered an injury to his right elbow that required surgery. When he was able to get back to the gym he sustained another injury, a deep bruise to his left hand, lengthening his layoff and prompting him to voluntarily relinquish the WBC version of his title, which the winner of the Garcia-Porter bout will claim.

Even without a do-over with Thurman to keep his competitive juices flowing, Garcia has rekindled the inner fire that began with the spark of his first little trophy. He returned to action on Feb. 17 of this year when he stopped former WBA lightweight and WBO welterweight titlist Brandon” Bam Bam” Rios in nine rounds in Las Vegas, after which Porter entered the ring and challenged him to the fight that is about to take place this weekend. If Thurman is unavailable at the moment, Porter makes a dandy substitute. To knock out an opponent who never has been stopped would be an added bonus.

“You never want to leave anything in the hands of the judges,” Garcia said. “To go in there and stop (Porter), it would definitely feel great. I’ve stopped a lot of guys for the first time in their career. So (if I do it), it wouldn’t be the first time, and it won’t be the last.”

Interestingly, the specter of Thurman – who retained his WBA welterweight championship with a close but unanimous decision over Porter on June 25, 2016 – lingers over this pairing of his onetime victims like a low-hanging cloud. Asked for his thoughts on Garcia-Porter, Thurman opined that the slightly favored Garcia has the edge in power, defense and boxing ability, but he isn’t sure that’s enough in what he terms “one of the best matchups of the year.”

“I try not to overthink it,” Thurman said. “It’s Porter by decision or Garcia only by KO. I lean toward Porter.”

Little wonder that Garcia, in or out of pajamas, has been getting up early to put in the work necessary to reclaim what was once his. There is always another trophy to be won, another chance to announce himself to the world as someone special. When the guy in the other corner feels the same way, something remarkable tends to happen.

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