In what ended up being a really close back-and-forth fight Shawn Porter emerged victorious as the WBC welterweight champion on September 8, but his opponent Danny Garcia doesn't see it that way.
Immediately after losing a narrow unanimous decision to Porter with the vacant WBC title on the line, Garcia said he didn't think Porter was the winner of that fight. Garcia did admit that Porter was the busier fighter, nothing Porter threw at him was anything special. Garcia added that he believes he got more clean punches in on Porter than vice versa.
"He was throwing a lot. I had my defense tight, so I wasn't feeling his punches. I thought I landed the clearer shots and won this fight. I have to sit back, relax and see what's next for me," Garcia said.
In some ways, Garcia was right. Whether or not Porter landed the better punches, Garcia was far more accurate than Porter, whose gameplan was to outwork the former junior welterweight champion while both men landed a similar number of punches. According to SHO Stats, Showtime's stat keeper for the fight, Garcia landed 168 of his 472 punches, good for 36 percent, and Porter landed 180 of his 742 total punches, good for 24 percent.
Even though Porter won the fight, it was a very close one that could have easily resulted in a draw or a win in Garcia's favor. Looking at the three official scorecards after the fight, the judges were only able to agree on the same score on just four rounds (rounds one, four, six and seven, three of which were in favor of Porter).
The loss now puts Garcia's career record in world title fights at 7-2 and now 0-2 in his last two fights. This was Garcia's second career loss after losing a unification fight against Keith Thurman in 2017.
