Garcia defends his junior welterweight title at Barclays

BY MIKE BERNIER

In front of an audience of over 13,000 exuberant fans at Barclays Center, Danny “Swift” Garcia (26-0, 16 KOs) of Philadelphia won a 12-round unanimous decision by the scores of 115-112, 114-112, and 116-111 against Brooklyn’s former five-time world champ Zab “Super” Judah (42-8, 29 KOs) in an exciting, action-packed fight.

“He’s a crafty veteran with a lot of power and the strongest guy I fought,” said Garcia.

During the buildup to the April 27 fight, things got so heated between the two camps that during Friday’s weigh-in each fighter tipped the scales individually and skipped the traditional final face-off.

“Regarding the bad blood, it’s gone,” said Garcia. “As you can see, it’s a lot of bad blood. I’ve got cuts, he has cuts. We came here and gave the people of Brooklyn a nice show.”

Garcia successfully got the better of Judah in most of the early rounds by varying his attack and managed to drop him in round eight with an overhand counter right that left Judah with a cut under his left eye.

Judah dug down into his reserve tank to win rounds 10 and 11 clearly but this success wasn’t enough to stop Garcia. “You win some, you lose some. Danny is a young, tough fighter. I was on my A-game tonight. I worked hard. We gave it our best shot,” said Judah.

With the win, Garcia — who is the current unified junior welterweight champion — will now be in line to defend his titles for the fourth time against the winner of an intriguing May 18 title bout between junior welterweights, Lamont Peterson and Lucas Matthysse in Atlantic City.

As part of the 10 fight card, Peter “Kid Chocolate” Quillin (29-0, 21 KOs), fighting out of New York City, defended his WBO middleweight crown with a seventh round TKO victory against Fernando Guerrero (25-2, 19 KOs) of Salisbury, Maryland.

Fans were also treated to the return of Danny “The Miracle Man” Jacobs (25-1, 22 KOs) who added another win to his resume by knocking out Keenan Collins (15-8-3, 10 KOs) of Brooklyn in round four. This is Jacobs’ third fight back to the sport since being diagnosed in May, 2011 with osteosarcoma. Jacobs’ recent success has given him the opportunity to move closer to a potential title fight in the near future.

The next boxing card at Barclays Center will be when Brooklyn’s Paulie “Magic Man” Malignaggi defends his WBA welterweight title against undefeated Adrien “The Problem” Broner on June 22.

Follow Mike Bernier on Twitter @mikeyboxx.