Chris Colbert figured he wouldn’t fight February 26 once he learned last week that Roger Gutierrez contracted COVID-19.
The brash Brooklyn native is thus thankful Hector Luis Garcia replaced Gutierrez on barely two weeks’ notice. Otherwise, not only would Colbert have been denied his shot at Gutierrez’s WBA world super featherweight title, he would’ve wasted a lot of time and money on a training camp he had almost completed.
As grateful as Colbert is for Garcia’s ambition, the 25-year-old contender also promised to prove to the undefeated Dominican southpaw that he made a major mistake in accepting their 12-round, 130-pound WBA elimination match at The Chelsea, a venue inside The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. Colbert (16-0, 6 KOs) admitted that he hasn’t done anything to learn about Garcia since their “Showtime Championship Boxing” main event became official, yet Colbert expects to dominate him.
“I haven’t found out nothing about him,” Colbert told BoxingScene.com. “I told y’all this already. I don’t do no homework. That’s not my job. At the end of the day, we got 12 rounds, 36 minutes, to figure out his style or what I gotta do to beat him. And since my middle name is Adapter, it won’t be that hard. It’ll take me about a round or two, but we gonna get the job done. That’s for sure, for certain, we gonna get the job done – in dominating fashion, too. I’m gonna take out my anger on him for [Gutierrez] backing out.”
Garcia (14-0, 10 KOs, 3 NC), a 2016 Olympian, is a left-handed fighter, whereas Venezuela’s Gutierrez (26-3-1, 20 KOs) boxes out of an orthodox stance.
“Everything is easy for me,” Colbert said. “I do this sh*t. I do this for real. I fight lefty, I fight righty, so there’s not much that’s difficult for me to make that switch.”
The 30-year-old Garcia defeated Mexican southpaw Isaac Avelar (16-4, 10 KOs) by unanimous decision in his most recent fight, an eight-rounder December 18 at The Armory in Minneapolis. His victory over Avelar marked just the second time Garcia has boxed beyond the sixth round in 14 professional fights.
“Good luck to him,” Colbert said. “I hope he’s in the best shape of his life, because to take the fight against me and not be in shape is crazy.”
In addition to Colbert-Garcia, Showtime will televise a 10-round co-feature between junior welterweights Gary Antuanne Russell (14-0, 14 KOs) and Viktor Postol (31-3, 12 KOs), a former WBC 140-pound champion from Ukraine. Postol is 38, yet he is still a step up in class for Russell, a 2016 U.S. Olympian from Capitol Heights, Maryland.
Jerwin Ancajas (33-1-2, 22 KOs), a southpaw from the Philippines, will make a mandated defense of his IBF junior bantamweight title against Argentina’s Fernando Daniel Martinez (13-0, 8 KOs) in the 12-round opener of Showtime’s tripleheader.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.