PBC Announces a Blockbuster: Mikey Garcia vs. Errol Spence on March 16

This afternoon (Nov. 13), Premier Boxing Champions announced a new deal with the Fox Network. Between Dec. 22 and March 16, 2019, eight PBC boxing shows will air on various Fox platforms. Most of the fights could be classified as generic title fights (e.g. they don’t get the juices flowing), but there is one blockbuster in the bunch. On March 16, Mikey Garcia will meet IBF world welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. This will be Fox’s initial pay-per-view offering.

Mikey Garcia (39-0, 30 KOs) has been targeting Errol Spence (24-0, 21 KOs) for quite some time. Talk about the fight overshadowed Garcia’s last outing where he unified the WBC and IBF lightweight titles with a 12-round decision over Robert Easter Jr. “There’s no one else that excites me, motivates me enough and who can challenge me other than Errol Spence,” said Garcia, “and I’m willing to take that challenge all the way up to 147 because that’s the fight I want and will motivate me the most.”

Replied Spence: “He will be pound-for-pound #1 if he beats me, but it’s not going to happen…there are weight classes for a reason.”

On current pound-for-pound lists, Garcia ranks # 4 by the Boxing Writers Association of America (one notch above Spence), #7 by The Ring (one notch above Spence who is tied in the #8 spot with Srisaket Sor Rungvisai), and #6 by the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board where Errol Spence is nowhere to be found. Of course, pound-for-pound ratings mean very little when a man is moving up 12 pounds to fight the man regarded as the hardest puncher in his weight class. There’s no question that Garcia is a great technician, perhaps the most fundamentally sound boxer in the sport, but on fight night Spence will almost certainly go to post a solid favorite.

Mikey Garcia previously won titles at 126 and 140 (he dropped back to lightweight to fight Robert Easter). In the ensuing months, we will be exposed to a lot of Sugar Ray Leonard analogies. Leonard moved up 13 pounds to fight Marvin Hagler and beat him after a three-year layoff, fodder for those who will make the case that Garcia is a very live underdog.

By challenging Spence, Garcia skirts an opportunity to further unify the lightweight title by taking on Vasiliy Lomachenko. He also skirts the shark-infested 140-pound division which is replete with young guns the likes of Regis Prograis and Josh Taylor. For him, this is clearly a legacy fight and if he falls short that won’t diminish his Hall of Fame credentials.

AT&T Stadium has a capacity of 80,000 for football. The last boxing show here was held in September of 2016. The match between Canelo Alvarez and England’s Liam Smith drew an announced crowd of 51,420. On paper, it’s the perfect venue for Spence-Garcia. Errol Spence resides 25 miles away in the Dallas suburb of DeSoto. However, there are 1.8 million Hispanics in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, 86 percent of who are Mexican-American.

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