For Mikey Garcia, the Weighting is the Hardest Part

Excuse the pun, but we have a serious riddle to discuss here: when is a welterweight not a welterweight?

The answer is when he's Mikey Garcia, a non-welterweight fighter who is not a welterweight. Also, Mikey Garcia is fighting Jessie Vargas Saturday night in Frisco, Texas at welterweight.

Indeed, for this gifted but imperfect pugilist, the weighting is the hardest part.

Garcia is, however, one of the 10-ish finest pound-for-pound fighters in all of boxing, an assertion that isn't met with much controversy. Despite his ill-advised move up to 147 pounds to face off with (read: get dominated by) the terrific Errol Spence Jr. last fall, he's still the lineal champion one step down in the 140-pound junior welterweight division. He has claimed notable scalps in Adrien Broner, Robert Easter and Sergey Lipinets. And perhaps he would have caught flak for retreating right back down to 140 immediately following his humbling at the hands of Spence, making his insistence on staying up at 147 and waging what is effectively a title eliminator against Jessie Vargas something of a swaggering bet on himself.

But it's also the wrong decision. Because Vargas may not be true welterweight, either -- he's naturally even bigger.

Vargas has won belts at both 140 and 147 pounds in the past, and only lost the latter WBO title because he ran into Manny Pacquiao (a "small" welterweight, coincidentally enough, but also the ultimate exception that proves the rule). So, how big is he? Well, BoxRec goes as far as ranking him No. 6 in the world in the 154-pound junior middleweight division.

In every way, the man is just gigantic compared to Garcia, whose stubbornness about sticking it out one class above his true comfort zone runs the risk of exploding all over his naturally smaller face this weekend.

Sure, we ought not expect something as grotesque as former junior welterweight lineal champ Amir Khan getting seduced by the siren song of cold, hard cash only to be shipwrecked on jagged rocks by Canelo Alvarez at an absurd 155-pound catchweight that should be illegal under international law. But when was the last time a +340 underdog looked as tasty as Vargas does Saturday? When has a -550 favorite teetered as perilously, relatively speaking, as Lil' Mikey?

Garcia's welterweight career is about to do one of two things: (1) end forever, or (2) make a bee-line for a title shot, perhaps for the one Vargas used to hold that's now wrapped around Manny Pacquiao's naturally smaller waist.

All told, he's either the kind of effervescent operator whose pure class transcends conventional weight division wisdom... or he's a defiant dad who refused to admit he took a wrong turn at the ol' 147 and got lost and really just needs to ask for some damn directions.

If it does come moving back down, we'd eventually begin to forget that Garcia ever limped back to junior welterweight with his naturally smaller tail between his legs following back-to-back humblings. There'd be no shame in continuing to reign as 140-pound king. But by moving up to 147 in the first place, Garcia made it clear that he's in it not just for victories and belts, but glory. The generational kind.

And while his dogged insistence on being a "real" welterweight comes with nakedly sincere risks, a lasting legacy weighs a whole lot more than seven pounds.