If there seemed like a definite lack of tension between trainers Kenny Porter and Angel Garcia leading up to their sons’ WBC title fight this month, it might be starting to pick up a little. And, quite frankly, I expect at least one Angel Garcia outburst before the opening bell rings.
But in response to Angel Garcia publicly calling into question the confidence of Team Porter, who recently brought in well-respected trainer Barry Hunter to help down the final stretch of training camp, Kenny Porter offered these words to Fight Hype.
“Again, in that 20 years that me and Barry were doing all the things that we were doing, we never met a guy named Angel Garcia at any tournaments. We never met a guy named Angel Garcia in any of our international competitions. He was never in any of our training courses at the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs or Lake Placid, New York.
“So he actually holds no value to us, in anything that we’ve ever done, you know what I mean? When you’re talking about the Mike Stafford’s of the world, the Kevin Cunningham’s of the world, the Barry Hunters — yeah, we all came up together. We’ve all been doing this for 20 years. I was going up against Kevin Cunningham when Shawn was 8 years old, when Shawn fought his guy.
“We never seen this guy [Angel Garcia]. So, you know, that means absolutely nothing to us...Everything came together like it was supposed to come together. We don’t consider what someone else thinks or what someone else is gonna say when it’s time for us to do what we do...if you can beat us, beat us! That’s all that matters.”
On if he expects any “fireworks” with Angel Garcia and his team leading into the fight:
“No, there’s no expectations of anything like that. Everybody knows what they should do and what they shouldn’t do and where I come from it’s called recognizing who you should be messing with and who you shouldn’t mess with. So thee game recognize the game and Angel ain’t gonna wanna play with me. He ain’t gonna wanna play with Barry...”