With just days to go until Premier Boxing Champions on ESPN fighters enter the ring for their showdowns at Barclays Center, catch up on what the fighters have been saying in the weeks leading up to fight week.
Saturday’s headlining event is the 147-pound debut of Danny “Swift” Garcia (30-0, 17 KOs) as he takes on Paulie “The Magic Man” Malignaggi (33-6, 7 KOs), with middleweight titlist Daniel “The Miracle Man” Jacobs (29-1, 26 KOs) defending against Sergio “The Latin Snake” Mora (28-3-2, 9 KOs).
DANNY GARCIA
“I’m not really concerned about Paulie, at this point in my career if I’m 110% percent ready, I feel like I can adapt to anything and find a way to win.
“It feels great to be at 147. For the first time in a long time, I could worry about training to get better and not training to lose weight. I’ve been fighting at 140 my whole career.
“I’ve been the underdog before, I’ve been the underdog before and I won. I can’t listen to none of that stuff after just going through each fight like I was, mentally prepared, physically prepared going in and get the job done.
“We added things to our workout now. We added a lot of explosive workouts, a lot of agility, a lot of footwork, a lot of things to making you more explosive, things I couldn’t do at 140 because I didn’t have the energy for it. But now the extra weight is really helping me.
“I’m very confident. I faced a lot of good fighters. I faced a lot of great fighters in my career. I have a lot of experience. I was a big 140-pound fighter. I’ve never faced a 140-pound fighter who was taller than me or who looked better than me.
“But I feel like at 147, you’re going to see a more athletic Danny Garcia and be able to use my legs more, using my jab more and see punches clearer. When you drain yourself as hard to see punches, then you get hit with a lot of dumb punches because your vision is not clear.
“I feel like my vision is going to be a lot clearer and be able to move my head, see the punches better, use my feet. And I think I’m going to be a champion at 147, too. I know so.”
PAULIE MALIGNAGGI
“I think styles make fight. From a style point of view there are things that I feel like I’ll be able to do against Danny. But I also expect Danny had made some adjustments since those fights.
“You get to the point when you’re not in the ring for a while. It’s going through my mind that maybe I don’t want to fight. But as time went by and I started working out again, I started realizing that it was something I missed. It was something I was still craving. I wanted to be back in there.
“If we’re going to talk about the layoff, people are going to talk about the fact that, I haven’t fought for a long time. But in reality, I actually haven’t trained this consistently in a decade, literally a decade.
“I do feel the sharpness in a gym. I do feel the timing is really good. Obviously my weight has come down. So, that’s a good feeling knowing that I have to drop a lot of weight during the training camp just working on the sharpness and keep getting better.
“I’m not looking at it as having any advantages. It’s just a matter of matching of my skills to his skills.
“I can’t really tell you exactly how I’m going to play it out until I’m in the ring myself. I plan on being the best me possible. I plan on being the sharpest me possible. And right now, in training, I feel really good. The plan is to flow this training camp into a sharp night on August 1st.”
DANIEL JACOBS
“It’ll be against the most experienced guy I’ve faced thus far. I’m looking forward to testing my challenge against this slick, crafty veteran in Sergio Mora.
“So there’s not a lot of fear as far as power is concerned but where he lacks that he makes up in his craftiness and his slickness and awkwardness and sometimes he does engage in the action as well.
“The test with Sergio Mora is – whether that he can be stopped or whether or not I can go the distance with him, he’s never been stopped before, so it will be icing on the cake to be able to not only to defeat him but to stop him in the match.
“I feel like I have a lot more advantages than he does in the fight. But whatever my advantages are and whatever gets me going, will be the deciding factor for me I would stick to. So if it’s my speed, then I’ll stick to using my speed. If it’s my power, backing him down, showing him what a real middleweight feels like, then that’s what I would do.”
SERGIO MORA
“I think I’m going to be an underdog for this fight again, fighting the younger, stronger champion in his hometown. So defeating him is going to be tough with all the cards stacked against me and that’s something that I grown used to and accustomed to.
“This is going to be a really exciting card because he’s in his hometown and defending the world title. I’m hungry for that world title and I know that I’m going to have to be extra sharp and do a lot more than just have a close victory in his hometown. So I’m going to have to press action and go out of my comfort zone and I think he’s going to have to go out of his comfort zone, which is going to make an interesting fight for everybody.
“I just continue educating people about the sweet science and letting them know that power is not the number one aspect you need to be successful it’s your agility, techniques, your defense, body shots, the strategy, it’s following that strategy it’s hard.
“Like I said, I think he possess everything that I don’t. But I have the experience. I think I take a better shot from experience with Danny and I think I follow my game plan more than Danny. A lot of boxers especially a lot of young athletic fighters they go out of their game plan and once they see that it’s not working. As a veteran, I know that it’s not working initially.”
