In the days leading up to Danny ‘Swift’ Garcia’s Brooklyn bout versus Paulie Malignaggi, Garcia set the record straight about where his main focus is.
“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.”
Those are words Garcia’s lived by as he’s bulked up to 147 pounds and feels more “energized” and agile than ever as he prepares to step into the ring to secure his undefeated record.
“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.”
He went on to elaborate on what the weight gain means for his fighting and the improvements made:
“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.”
While Danny Garcia’s happy to jump up in weight, Paulie Malignaggi’s just happy to get back into the ring, period.
After a long hiatus, spent commentating during fights versus partaking in them, the ‘Magic Man’ talked about what his long awaited return means to him.
“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.”
Garcia vs Malignaggi takes place Saturday, August 1 at 9pm live on ESPN