By Michael Woods

Mikey Garcia (37-0, 30 KOs) had been the recipient of a pretty heavy, and only certain to increase, push on the part of promoter Top Rank in 2013 headed to 2014.

Being savvy sorts who understand the stable needs to be filled and then re filled with studs, Top Rank's CEO Bob Arum and company looked to Garcia, from the Fighting Garcia Family, as an heir, if not the primary heir, to gain market share in visibility and prominence as their pac(k) leader Manny Pacquiao slid himself further into the political realm, while he fended off Father Times’ talons.

But the push ended when the relationship went off the rails. A contract renewal negotiation became strained and then led to a rupture.

Garcia and Top Rank parted ways and holiday cards were not being exchanged.

Still aren’t, I’d assume...

On Dec. 19 BoxingScene ran a piece by Keith Idec titled Mikey Garcia: Bob Arum Won’t Allow Lomachenko to Fight Me

“If he wants to move up to 35, we can definitely do that,” Garcia said to reporters while hyping up his February fight with IBF 140-pound champion Sergey Lipinets.

“I know Bob won’t say anything positive about that. I don’t even know if [Lomachenko] is actually interested in facing me. The way I know Top Rank works, they’ll have somebody else in line for him to win a title at 35 or maybe even at 40. Most likely, he’s not gonna wanna face me because Bob won’t allow it.”

Garcia did note he thinks Loma would like to scrap with him.

Arum offered a counter punch to the statements.

“What is he talking about? We have an open door, Garcia can come in and talk to us. The guy is crazy, that’s no way to call out a fighter! As far as I understand it he’s fighting somebody next anyway,” Arum told BoxingScene.com.

“I really resent using the names of other fighters that way, saying “he won’t fight me, the promoter wont allow it.” Bullsh*t! If he came in and with not an astronomical ask, of course we’d do it. Loma beats the pants off Mikey, he says Garcia is too slow. Now, Garcia could disagree. But there’s absolutely no impediment to Lomachenko fighting Mikey Garcia. Vasyl has designated Mikey as one of guys he’s happy to fight. Garcia has to call us up, say he wants to fight Lomachenko, do we have a date, yeah we do, then the question is, how much do you want? You have negotiate, if the price is right, we do it, it’s not rocket science.”

My three cents: No, it’s not rocket science, sometimes it’s more complicated than that. Because it involves money, and market share, and competing platforms and personalities, and histories, and ego and...you get the point. I do think a Lomachenko vs Mikey Garcia fight is a fight the fans want, and deserve, and should get made in 2018. This year actually had fewer of those fights than it could/should have, and that has me thinking people have over-rated this year in boxing to a degree. That’s not a nit-picky critique; I more so put that out there to point out we have room for improvement and I think 2018 could well be better than 2017, with more must-make fights occurring at 130-147 than we saw this year. And also, no one has to be entered into a mutual admiration society, or be exchanging holiday cards, to make deals to make fights that make sense.

Follow Woods on Twitter if you like.