Danny Garcia says Yordenis Ugas could beat Errol Spence Jr. if he’s able to stay on his feet in their welterweight unification fight on April 16th at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Garcia believes the Spence-Ugas fight will be decided by a knockdown, which he thinks will be initiated by IBF/WBC welterweight champion Spence (27-0, 21 KOs). He’s the bigger puncher of the two, and he’s younger.
It would be a massive shock to the boxing world if the 35-year-old WBA 147-lb champion Ugas (27-4, 12 KOs) beats Errol because few people are picking him to win.
Spence is better inside and outside fighter, and he’s got the speed and power advantage. For Ugas to win, he’s going to need to take the fight to Spence and try and outwork him.
“If you look at our fight, we landed the same amount of punches and we both threw more than 700 punches,” said Danny Garcia to Fight Hub TV about his December 2020 fight against Errol Spence Jr.
“The only difference is he threw more jabs than me,” said Danny about his fight with Spence. “When I say the difference was the jab, he didn’t beat me up with the jab, he threw more and was more effective than me.
“If you look at the punch stats, that’s the only difference in the CompuBox and the jabs. But with Ugas, we’ve got a different style. Ugas has a good jab himself and goes to the body well.
“I think that’s going to be a good competitive fight. I think the difference in the fight is probably going to be a knockdown. That’s how I see it. I feel the difference in the fight is going to be a knockdown by Spence.
“I think it’s going to be something like that but less drama,” said Danny when told that Spence’s fight with Ugas will be similar to Errol’s 2019 match against Shawn Porter, which was decided by an 11th round knockdown.
“Porter makes any fight hard. He throws a lot of punches and he’s awkward. I don’t think Ugas is awkward. If you look at Ugas and even Porter, that was a tough fight. Porter makes a hard fight for anybody.
“I think that fight [Spence vs. Ugas] is a good match-up. Two champions going head to head and Ugas is hungry. I can see him maybe even winning it.
“Like I said before, if he [Ugas] doesn’t get knocked down at least once in the fight, it’ll be close, but I think that’ll be the difference in the fight.
“When they first switched the opponent when Spence said he was hurt, I thought Pacquiao and Spence would have been a better fight because Spence stylistically works a little bit better for Pacquiao.
“When I heard Ugas was coming in, I knew automatically it was a harder fight for Pacquiao because Ugas fights at the distance, and he has that Cuban style of boxing where they use distance.
“I knew it was going to be hard for Pacquiao to get in on him, and that was the difference. Pacquiao couldn’t get in on him because Ugas controlled the distance.
“He was touching him with the jab, he was touching him to the body from the outside, he was throwing looping right hands, and he looked a lot bigger than Manny.
“He just controlled the fight at the distance and kind of schooled Manny. I knew that was going to be a harder fight for Manny than Spence. I called it that Ugas was going to beat him.
“I said Ugas was going to beat him easily because of the style. It was a harder style for Pacquiao,” said Garcia.
