In this video interview with FightHub, Mikey Garcia talks about how he feels after a 2-year hiatus while he battled to get out of his Top Rank contract. Here are some excerpts below with the full video above.
Mikey Garcia on if he has any regrets about sitting on the shelf for two years:
"I don't have any regrets because I learned so much more [about this business] and I proved a point. I stuck to my guns, I fought for what I believe is right. You know it's not okay for promoters to try to take advantage of fighters. They sometimes do, they're able to get away with it a lot of times and fighters aren't able to do anything about it. I was lucky enough to be able to fight in the legal court and go all the way."
On if he's fighting without a manager at the moment:
"We don't have anything right now. This is all set up through Stephen Espinoza at Showtime, very excited to have me on his network, [Lou] DiBella who is putting a show along with Haymon/PBC, but there's no official signed contract - not even with Showtime or nobody. So we look forward to continuing negotiations, but for the moment right now, we put everything on hold until this fight is done."
On his he has any animosity towards Top Rank:
"Nothing personal, it's just business. And I know at the end of the day if they need me or I need them - it's all business. I honestly believe Bob [Arum] didn't know all the details regarding my case and my situation. A lot of it was misinformed, maybe, or misinterpreted by both parties - it's just business."
On Arum stressing that Mikey turned down a big fight against Terence Crawford:
"Maybe they told him that they did offer me a fight when they never have been. You know if he's got somebody working for him and they want to show the boss that they're doing their job, they might even lie to him to tell him 'well we're offering him fights but he keeps turning them down,' or 'he's asking for too much money.' Whatever reason just to make the boss happy. In reality they never offered a single fight, that fight was never even talked about...
"The Gamboa talks were still in effect back before all this started back in, I think, February or March [2014] when we were talking about Gamboa. First thing was the purse that they offered compared to what they told me Crawford was making was not something we agreed. When they finally started to negotiate a little bit better on the purse, they wanted me to fight at 130 - I said no we got to move up to 135. And the last thing that we didn't come to an agreement was because they wanted me to sign another extension to my contract, which I believed was already up, February 2014.
"So if they want to sign another extension that means we have to renegotiate...They don't want to renegotiate they just wanted an extension on top of what I had. Those terms were set from 2009...I said no, you cannot do this, if you want to renegotiate we can do that. When they said no, then I'm free. They said no, you're not free, there's an extension already that applies. Well if there's already an extension why do you want another one? And then their response was 'well then you're just gonna sit, we're not gonna fight you.' I said 'ok then, if that's how we're gonna do it, let's do that.' They tried to push me around, I'm not gonna let that happen."
On if he feels other fighters on Top Rank were getting a bigger promotional push than he was:
"The way I've seen it, very clearly...[Top Rank president] Todd duBoef kept claiming that he builds product...That's all we are to him, just product. It's like an assembly line, you have a fighter, they build you, they grow you, they groom you, you're champion, and if you're gone, you're gone. They're on to the next one. It's just an assembly line to them, they're just building product. He kept emphasizing that and I clearly see it...That's the way the company works but when you speak to them as a fighter, they want to sweet talk you as much as they can but when you really see how things work, it's not like that."