Garcia Records KO in Memory of His Father

Alex Garcia fought perhaps the best fight of his young career Thursday night at the Sports Arena. It came one week after the death of his father.

Going up against David Slaughter of San Diego, Garcia opened immediately with leading lefts to the head and right-hand body shots. He dropped Slaughter with a left in the first round, then finished him with a single, crushing left hook at the start of the second.

“I was thinking about my dad,” the 220-pound Alex Jr. said. “I wanted to do it for him. I was trying to push it as hard as I could.”

Garcia’s record as a professional heavyweight is 7-0 with four knockouts. As an amateur, the San Fernando fighter won the national amateur super-heavyweight title and represented the United States in international competition.

Since turning pro, he has been slowly learning the ropes of the fight game. In some of his bouts he has appeared hesitant. In others awkward. Thursday night he looked simply devastating.

Garcia has been working specifically on the left hook and that was the punch that punished Slaughter, along with jab-uppercut combinations.

Under the shadow of Garcia’s immediate pursuit, it was difficult to see a how good a boxer Slaughter was.

The San Diego fighter, who weighed in at 204, answered briefly with several combinations, but it wasn’t enough. He went down at 1:15 of the second round and stayed down for several minutes.

Garcia’s manager, Blinky Rodriguez, wondered how the death of Alex Sr. would affect his fighter.

“I didn’t know how he was going to take it,” Rodriguez said. “But you can just see that he’s so determined. He has dedicated his career to his father.”

All that was left for Slaughter (7-4 with five knockouts) was to ask, in the locker room after the fight, “What happened? What did he hit me with?”

In his most recent fight three months ago, Garcia won a six-round decision over Dwain Bonds at the Olympic Auditorium.

Garcia had begun to build a following at the Olympic but has been forced to seek new surroundings because that historic arena is going out of business.

At the Sports Arena, his bout followed the main event--Roger Mayweather of Grand Rapids, Mich., knocked out World Boxing Council super lightweight champion Rene Arredondo of Mexico in the fifth round--and a largely Hispanic crowd cheered madly for the hometown heavyweight.

Garcia might have found a new home.