With an undefeated record at stake, Mikey Garcia shined in his 140-pound debut.
Garcia, the WBC champion at 135 pounds, defeated former world champion Adrien Broner in the main event of a Showtime-televised card from the Barclays Center. Garcia won the mostly one-sided affair via unanimous decision (117-111, 116-112, 116-112). Fightful also scored the fight 117-111 in favor of Garcia.
The lightweight champion dominated most of the fight, but Broner caught a second wind in the championship rounds of the fight. Broner made the fight an interesting one by landing several body shots to Garcia late in the fight, but by that point, it was too late for Broner to win in the cards.
When describing his performance, Garcia called this win one of the best in his career.
"This is definitely one of my best performances ever. I think I controlled the fight in the early rounds and I kept the activity up. [Broner] is a great fighter who has great skills. I was the superior fighter tonight," Garcia said.
Garcia had been hinting at a permanent move to junior welterweight should he win this fight, and remained coy as to what his future entails.
"Anybody that wants to come join us on Showtime, give us a call, we are ready for anybody. Maybe I'll go down to 135, stay at 140 or go up to 147," Garcia said.
In terms of activity, Garcia was the far more active fighter. According to CompuBox stats, Garcia landed 244 of 783 total punches (31 percent) while Broner landed just 125 of 400 punches (31 percent). In terms of power punches, Garcia had the edge in terms of volume, landing 152 of 328 punches in that category (46 percent) and Broner only landed 72 of 161 power punches (45 percent).
The fight headlined a card where Jermall Charlo became the WBC's mandatory challenger to Gennady Golovkin's middleweight title and 2012 Olympic gold medalist Katie Taylor emerging victorious in her United States debut.