Although it may seem the rivalry between Danny Garcia and Shawn Porter started back in February when Porter stormed the ring after Garcia’s victory over Brandon Rios, the rivalry stems back even farther than that.
It all started with an Instagram post from Porter last year that showed a different side of the former IBF welterweight champion. In that post, Porter not only called out Garcia to a fight, but Porter did it dressed as The Undertaker. Below is the Instagram post:
At the time of the Instagram post, there were talks of pitting Porter and Garcia in a title eliminator to decide a mandatory challenger to Keith Thurman‘s WBC welterweight title. Earlier this year, after both Garcia and Porter had won title eliminators, Thurman vacated the title as he is recovering from injuries. As such, the WBC ordered the two mandatory challengers to fight for the vacant title.
In an interview with Fightful, Porter spoke on that promo and said it was a lot of fun doing that. Porter detailed how the idea of dressing up as The Undertaker came about and said the responses from people has been very positive.
“My dad saw a post of Danny Garcia and he said, ‘Hey man. Do a post saying you want to fight Danny Garcia.’ I was simply going to just talk to the camera and I kinda said, ‘Nah it’s boring. I do that all the time.’ Then it just popped into my head, do something fun. I went home, didn’t even rehearse [the promo], played it in my head a couple of times and said go. The guy holding the camera tried not to laugh and he put it together on one shot. It was a lot of fun and it was a way for me to show my humor and my other side, a side people don’t really see much. It definitely was a lot of fun. The way people responded to it was even better for me,” Porter said.
As far as his history being a pro wrestling fan is concerned, Porter said he used to watch wrestling in the past during the Attitude Era.
“I’ve seen wrestling before. I’m no stranger to it. I’m not an avid fan. My era was just the rise of Stone Cold, those guys. My era wasn’t really much Macho Man, but I was familiar with them,” Porter said.
Of course, Porter is not the first boxer to delve a little bit into pro wrestling. Pro wrestling has a long history with boxing with one such example being Floyd Mayweather Jr. wrestling Big Show in a marquee matchup at WrestleMania 24.
Porter’s upcoming fight against Garcia will headline a card at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, the site of WWE’s annual SummerSlam pay-per-view from 2015 to 2018. The card, televised on Showtime, will be a tripleheader that includes a title eliminator between Yordenis Ugas and Cesar Barrionuevo and a heavyweight fight between Adam Kownacki and former champion Charles Martin.
