As WBC lightweight titleholder Mikey Garcia (38-0, 30 KOs) gets prepared to put his belt up against Robert Easter Jr.’s IBF strap on July 28, Garcia holds an open media workout where he does some light shadowboxing in anticipation for the unification fight.
Garcia, 30, is most recently coming off a short stint in the 140lb division where he beat Adrien Broner by unanimous decision last summer and then went on to snag the IBF junior welterweight title off of Sergey Lipinets this past March. Garcia ultimately decided that he has more lucrative options back down the scale, though, so quickly dropped the 140lb title and decided to move back down to lightweight in an attempt to unify world titles.
Easter (21-0, 14 KOs), 27, is coming off of a couple of close wins in his last few outings where there has been some debate on if he really deserved the nods over the likes of Javier Fortuna and Richard Commey, but he’s still holding onto the belt.
Conventional wisdom says that although Easter will enter this fight with a massive height and reach advantage, he tends to throw all that out of the window once the bell rings and fight in a manner that’s probably not most advantageous to him. If he does the same against someone of Garcia’s caliber, that’ll surely be costly.
We’ll find out for sure in just a couple of weeks.