ARLINGTON, Texas — Mikey Garcia wears a nice suit while he sits inside a largely empty AT&T Stadium.

Outside, it’s cold and rainy. Inside the billion-dollar stadium, everything looks and feels perfect. Most of the people there are in public relations, janitorial workers charged with keeping everything clean, or tourists who have paid to walk around the immaculate stadium. It’s about 90 minutes before a scheduled mid-day press conference where Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys and the stadium, will join Garcia and his March 16 opponent, Errol Spence Jr. They will pose for pictures and answer questions related to their fight on Fox Pay-Per-View. They will talk of the fight’s importance and how it’s fitting that AT&T Stadium, which can seat upward of 105,000, will host it.

In his first professional fight, in 2006, Garcia fought in front of a few hundred people in a Southern California ballroom. This is a long way from where he began. An even longer way from how he once saw boxing. And now, Garcia prepares himself to attempt what many see as foolish. He has not only chosen to fight Spence — a man that others who fight for a living seemingly avoid — but Garcia is entirely confident.

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Talk to Garcia and you soon see he’s convinced he can beat Spence. It’s a conviction beyond the usual things a boxer says when trying to sell what everyone else sees as a mismatch. There’s an audacity to Garcia. And you can’t understand it without knowing who and where he comes from.

Boxing comes easy for Garcia, the son of immigrants

It’s a common beginning for many parents of Mexican-Americans. Born into limited possibilities, any attempt to make something of themselves required them moving away from home.

“My dad had a third-grade education in Mexico,” Garcia says. He repeats himself. “Third grade. My mom had a fifth-grade education. They were raised in a poor home. ... They got married and they had their family, but there’s hardly any future.”

Like many before him, Eduardo — Garcia’s father — left the familiar for the United States’ unknown. He worked for as long as the produce he was picking required. When it ended, he returned home to Michoacán. When the picking season began again, he returned to the United States, again.

“He was able to finally bring his whole family to the States,” said Garcia, “… they were able to become residents here.” His parents worked different jobs at different factories until they moved to Oxnard, California. More back-breaking manual labor.

“I still remember my dad, my mom, coming home on certain evenings,” Garcia recalls, his tone slightly lowered. “Their clothes dirty, muddy. Red stains everywhere [on] their boots from working the strawberry fields.”

From time to time, Garcia drives by those fields. He sees people working the way his father and mother once did. He feels chills across his body. “Sometimes it brings tears to your eyes,” Garcia said of those visits. “You get emotional, like, ‘Damn, my dad was out here doing this.’ It’s hard, back-breaking labor. It’s tough. All with intent and the dream of one day giving us a better future. A better life.”

Decades after his mother and father first worked those fields, Garcia remembers, and it’s doubtful he’ll ever forget. He now feels a responsibility to add to the boxing legacy of the Garcia family, which his father also began. He feels that same responsibility to fight for his fans. It now feels like an obligation. And that feeling — so far as boxing is concerned — wasn’t always there.

“When [Mikey] started boxing we didn’t really think he was too serious about it,” remembers his brother and trainer, Robert, a former world champion. “He never really wanted to go to the gym at all.”

Mikey is the youngest of seven children. So young that he grew up closer in age to his nieces and nephews than to his sisters and brothers. It wasn’t until he was 13 years old that Garcia, almost as if by coincidence, first fought. He was at a local boxing event to cheer for his nephew. When a young boxer lacked an opponent, Robert had his little brother fill-in. With borrowed equipment and without formal training, Mikey fought.

“It came like a natural thing for me, and I liked it,” Garcia said. “That’s how my amateur career started. But again, no interest in a future in boxing. I just thought it was like a little pastime, something to do.”

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