The long awaited fight between Danny Garcia and Zab Judah will take place tonight at 9 p.m. ET on Showtime, as Garcia will defend his WBC and WBA junior welterweight titles in tonight's main event.
Via ESPN:
When they meet on Saturday night (Showtime, 9 ET/PT) at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., it will be the culmination of a rancor-filled promotion that suffered through one delay, which only ratcheted up the bad feelings to the point at which promoter Golden Boy made the last-minute decision to not have them appear together at Thursday's final news conference over concerns that things could get ugly -- yet again.
"We thought it was the right thing to do," Golden Boy president Oscar De La Hoya said. "We want to see a fight Saturday night. We just didn't want to risk anything."
There had been an unexpected confrontation on Tuesday night after the fighter camps got into it at a meet-and-greet for fans at a Brooklyn sporting goods store when Judah crashed Garcia's appearance. Judah had been invited to participate but turned it down and showed up only after learning that Garcia was there. It resulted in a skirmish that wound up spilling into the parking lot.
That led to increased security at the gym in New York where Garcia was training, as well as the decision to keep the camps apart on Thursday.
It is highly unusual for fighters to appear separately at a final news conference. One notable exception came in 2002 when then-heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson held separate news conferences days before their much-anticipated title fight because of the extreme tension between the fighters, which had already turned the initial news conference to announce the bout into a melee.