Ranking the Best Opponents for Danny Garcia's Next Fight

In the end, the ocean beat down the sandcastle.

Unbeaten slugger Danny Garcia—whose style was compared by ESPN analyst Teddy Atlas to an insistent and perpetual wave—eventually overtook the beachfront defense of Paulie Malignaggi on the way to a ninth-round TKO in their Premier Boxing Champions main event at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.

The end came at 2:22 of the ninth, when referee Arthur Mercante Jr. decided he’d seen enough.

“Garcia kept coming and Paulie ran out of places to move that sandcastle back,” Atlas said after the fight. “The ref did the right thing. He did the professional thing. He did the compassionate thing.”

The Brooklyn-born Malignaggi, who’d returned after a 15-plus-month hiatus, didn’t flat-out announce his retirement in the ring afterward, but when asked if he’d fight again, he replied, “probably not.”

“I felt like if I didn’t come up with a big performance tonight, it was my last performance,” Malignaggi said. “Little by little, he broke me down. I have no qualms about the stoppage. It was a good stoppage. I hate to make an emotional decision. If it ends in Brooklyn tonight, at least I ended it at home.”

It was hardly a barnburner of a fight, but Garcia did control the majority of what action there was. He moved forward continually and landed the more powerful, if not more frequent, blows. Malignaggi was able to be effective in spurts while using his legs and fighting behind a quick left jab, but he was cut both over and beneath the right eye and reddened around the rib cage where Garcia was landing frequently.

Bleacher Report had it scored 78-74 for Garcia, or six rounds to two, at the time of the stoppage.

“I felt a lot stronger,” said Garcia, who officially abandoned the 140-pound ranks to campaign full time as a welterweight. “In the ninth round, I was catching him and I felt like it was round one. We came here and we executed the game plan.”

Malignaggi, who’s built a solid reputation in his own part-time vocation as a ringside analyst, suggested Garcia could be effective in his new weight class.

“I think Danny can be a really, really upper-echelon fighter. I think he can put his name in the history books,” he said. “He doesn’t get frustrated. If he does get frustrated he doesn’t show it. Every time a round would start, he was fresh all the time.”

Given the success of his welterweight debut, significant options should abound for Garcia going forward. With that in mind, we put together a list of a half-dozen prospective foes who could make sense for the next time he steps in the ring. Click through to see who we came up with, and feel free to drop in some ideas of your own in the comments section.

6. Marcos Maidana

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Marcos Maidana hasn't done a lot of boxing lately.

But that doesn't mean the two-time Floyd Mayweather Jr. victim has been quiet.

The rugged Argentine saw his profile rise dramatically after a pair of competitive losses to the consensus welterweight king in 2014. And, though he's not fought since the second of those Money shots, he's not been shy about expressing a desire to welcome Garcia to the ranks of full-fledged 147-pounders—and having a chance to out-do a South American countryman along the way.

“He did mention that he would want to fight Danny Garcia," Sebastian Contursi, Maidana's manager, told The Ring. "But what he did say was, ‘I’d like to beat the guy who beat Lucas Matthysse,’ and that would be Danny Garcia. It’s nothing personal but I think that there has always been a rivalry between Maidana and Matthysse."

Garcia beat Matthysse on the undercard of Mayweather's 2013 match with Saul "Canelo" Alvarez, three months before Maidana made his presence felt with an upset beating of then-welterweight title claimant Adrien Broner. Garcia also has a victory over Amir Khan, who beat Maidana by decision in 2010. Both Garcia and Maidana have also fought—and defeated—since-retired Mexican legend Erik Morales.

Following Garcia's win over Lamont Peterson in April, Maidana went to Facebook with images of him and Garcia alongside each other, with a provocative message underneath.

“I don’t care who won tonight, but nobody will save Danny if we fight,” Maidana wrote. “I’ll give Danny the real welcome to the welterweight division. Let’s do it.”

5. Timothy Bradley

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Though arguments can be made suggesting Garcia and Timothy Bradley are the premier 140-pound champions of the last 10 years, the two men never got together while ruling the junior welterweight ranks.

But if Garcia's got titles on his mind these days, old business could make for new recognition.

Bradley held both the WBC and WBO belts during stretches of an unbeaten run from 2008 to 2011, winning the title from Junior Witter and defending it six times before moving up to beat Manny Pacquiao in 2012. Garcia, meanwhile, picked up the vacant WBC crown in 2012 and defended it and the WBA title over five fights before making the welterweight jump official against Malignaggi on Saturday.

Bradley, who lost to Pacquiao in a 2014 rematch, became a 147-pound champion for the second time when the WBO stripped Floyd Mayweather Jr. and elevated him from interim to full-fledged champion.

Garcia has said his quest at 147 revolves around championships, and he suggested to Fight Hype in 2011 that a Bradley matchup would be advantageous.

"If I was to ever fight Bradley in the future, I feel like his head wouldn't come close to me because I'm strong and I hit hard," Garcia said. "I'd hit him with a couple of shots and that would back him right up and make him respect me. He doesn't respect a lot of fighters because he hasn't fought a lot of fighters that can punch."

4. Keith Thurman

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All of a sudden, Keith Thurman is a man in search of momentum.

While it's true that the welterweight nicknamed "One Time" is still unbeaten at 26-0 and still in possession—thanks to the WBA—of a second-tier championship trinket, it's no less true that the hype surrounding him at this very moment 12 months ago has taken something of a hit in the 365 days since.

The power-punching Floridian returned from injury to shut out then-unbeaten Leonard Bundu over 12 rounds last December, but the consensus post-fight opinion was much less magnificent than meh. And, though he won nearly every round from former Floyd Mayweather Jr. dance partner Robert Guerrero three months later, the performance also generated as many questions as it answered.

Fast-forward to a mid-July match with Luis Collazo and it was more of the same. Thurman controlled the action for much of the fight, but was badly hurt by a body shot along the way and ultimately secured the victory when the Puerto Rican's team chose to keep him on the stool with an eye cut after seven rounds.

A Garcia fight would match two of the division's young lions—Thurman is 26, Garcia is 27—and position the winner to stake a title claim if Mayweather follows through on plans to cede the throne in September. And, conveniently, Garcia lobbed a verbal grenade toward Thurman via ThaBoxingVoice.com last year.

"Keith Thurman is a good fighter at 147," Garcia said, "but he still hasn't beat nobody to be elite, to sell out stadiums."

3. Shawn Porter

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Speaking of momentum, few welterweights have as much these days as Shawn Porter.

The Ohio native nearly beat Garcia's Saturday victim—Malignaggi—into retirement last year in Washington, D.C., but had his own run derailed by Kell Brook one fight later.

He's since returned for a pair of victories, including a catch-weight defeat of Cincinnati resident Adrien Broner in June that was billed as the "Battle of Ohio."

Subsequently, Porter told ThaBoxingVoice.com that he'd be happy to meet Garcia in either his adopted hometown of Las Vegas, or in Garcia's Saturday stomping grounds, the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

And, upon being told that Garcia considered him a tailor-made opponent, Porter responded confidently.

"He's the hot name coming from 140. it makes sense that Danny Garcia face 'Showtime' Shawn Porter real soon," Porter said. "He's right there for the picking. If he thinks I'm tailor-made for him, come bring it. I got a whole bunch of tailor-made suits, I know how to fit into those. I fit in just fine."

2. Amir Khan

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Precisely 1,113 nights ago in Las Vegas, Amir Khan couldn't last four rounds with Garcia.

But that was 2012.

And now, in 2015, it's Garcia who's suggesting a second go-round with the high-profile British slugger wouldn't be such a bad thing for his own career track.

"It's a big fight," Garcia told ThaBoxingVoice.com. "He's a star in boxing. I'm a big star in boxing now. If it happens, it happens, I'm down. Why not? When it comes to names, Khan's probably one of the biggest names, bigger than (Shawn Porter and Keith Thurman)."

The Malignaggi win was Garcia's seventh straight since the Khan victory, which back then unified his WBC belt at 140 pounds with Khan's WBA strap. Khan fought just once more as a junior welterweight after the loss, and he has since gone 4-0 as a full-fledged welterweight—including wide scorecard defeats of former 147-pound title claimants Devon Alexander and Luis Collazo.

Not surprisingly, he fancies the idea of another meeting, too.

"I'd love the rematch against Garcia because I know deep down I'm a better fighter than him," Khan told Press Association Sport (via the Mirror). "I made a mistake in that fight and I paid for that mistake. But I know I can beat him. I know I'm a better fighter."

1. Kell Brook

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The best welterweight in the world not named Floyd Mayweather Jr. might just be Kell Brook.

So it's hardly a surprise that the British-based IBF champion's name is on Garcia's lips.

The Philadelphian suggested prior to the Malignaggi win that Brook's hardware is a significant draw for him, though getting him to take the plunge and fly across the Atlantic to get it done might be a trial.

“He has got the IBF world title. Those are the match-ups that I’m looking forward to. I definitely want to win a world title,” Garcia told ThaBoxingVoice.com. “I would definitely visit (the UK), I don’t think I’d fight (there) though. I heard the taxes are crazy.”

Brook has fought twice in the United States, most recently for his title win over Shawn Porter last year in California. His two subsequent defenses, however, have both been on home turf, and it'll be a key negotiating point to see which of the two sides is more willing to leave its comfort zone.

Garcia has fought outside the U.S. twice, once in Mexico in 2010 and once in Puerto Rico—where he traces his family roots—in 2014.