Philly boxer Danny Garcia is back in the ring after a nearly 2-year break to confront his anxiety

Danny Garcia spent the day where he spends most of them: the boxing gym he owns in his old neighborhood under the watch of his dad. He started boxing when he was 7 years old, used the sport to become rich and famous, captured championship belts, and moved his family from Juniata Park to a mansion in Montgomery County.

And another big fight — perhaps the biggest in a career of big fights — was looming two years ago as Garcia and his father, Angel, drove home from the gym. For the Garcias, life seemed good. But then Angel Garcia, behind the wheel of his pickup truck, noticed that his son was crying.

“I said, ‘Danny, what’s wrong? Talk to me. Tell me how you feel.’ He couldn’t tell me,” said Angel Garcia, who trains his son. “He would say, ‘Dad, I don’t know what’s going on.’ He’s a tough guy, so when he cried it really hit me. Oh, crap, this is serious. This is for real. He felt dark like a black cloud was hovering over him. I knew right there that he was suffering from anxiety. It’s like everything is closing in on you.”

The pressures that came with being at the top of the sport for nearly a decade had finally cracked Garcia, a fighter known for his concrete-like chin. The pandemic was still surging then and Garcia’s training camp was held under strict COVID-19 protocols, which the fighter said only made him feel more alone.

“It was just a tough time in the world,” Garcia said. “A weird atmosphere. It was like a dream.”

His dad didn’t know what to do. If he told anyone, Angel Garcia knew his son’s shot in December 2020 to reclaim the welterweight title against Errol Spence Jr. would be called off.

So he waited for his son — a fighter who has never been knocked down and once withstood a blow that knocked his mouthpiece into the crowd — to rally himself. A few weeks later, the Garcias flew to Dallas and Danny Garcia lost by unanimous decision.

Angel Garcia said he’s not making excuses, but his son was not himself that night.

“He wasn’t there,” Angel Garcia said. “I thought he would get over it. People think that these guys are athletes so they can’t suffer from that. They’re suffering. They’re humans. They think they’re super people, but they’re humans at the end of the day. I’m glad it all happened. I tell him not to be ashamed about it. Tell the truth. It’s OK.”

Danny Garcia returned home mentally exhausted. It was the 39th fight of his professional career — a journey that has been at the forefront of the sport ever since his stunning knockout 10 years ago of Amir Khan — and Garcia knew he needed to step away. The 34-year-old still loved boxing and had no plans to retire. But it was time for a break.

His fight on July 30 in Brooklyn against José Benavidez Jr. (27-1-1, 18 knockouts) will be his first time in the ring since his loss to Spence. The 19-month layoff is the longest break of Garcia’s career. Garcia (36-3, 21 KOs) said he’s refreshed.

“Being in this game for so long, the pressure. It was only a matter of time before everyone breaks,” Garcia said. “I’m happy it happened to me because I reached my breaking point with the pressure and everything going on in my career and being here for so long and fighting for so long and having so much pressure. Taking care of my family, trying to be a champion, trying to be a good dad. The pressure got to me. It all got to me. It was a big fight.

“I’m glad it happened to me because I was able to rebuild from it. You don’t know how strong you are until you have that mental breakdown. Ten years in the game. Fighting, being the underdog, beating the odds. I just got a little bit tired, mentally tired. That break is what I needed. I feel good.”

As Angel Garcia spent two years in prison on drug charges in the 1990s, he would call home every day to tell his 8-year-old son that he would never go back to jail once he was released. Garcia told his son they would go to the Harrowgate Boxing Club as soon as he returned home.

It wasn’t easy for Danny Garcia, who grew up at Second and Glenwood, to navigate life without his dad. Angel Garcia said he knew that took a toll on his children, but he also admired how Danny and his older brother, Erik, were strong enough to not only overcome it but avoid the mistakes of their father.

Angel Garcia kept his promise to his sons and Danny Garcia, with his dad and his brother in his corner, won his first world title 14 years after his dad was released from prison. If Danny Garcia could overcome a difficult childhood in a tough neighborhood to become world champion, surely he could shake off the feelings he felt that afternoon in his father’s truck.

“I’m a mentally strong person. That’s what got me here. But it was something about that feeling that just didn’t feel right. Everything felt weird,” Garcia said. “...That’s why I thought I would be OK. I was like, ‘Man, I’ve done this stuff so many times. I’m able to focus through anything.’”

Leading up to the Spence fight, Garcia said he came to the gym feeling nervous. He would try to talk to himself — “Why am I nervous to work out? This is ridiculous,” Garcia said — but it didn’t change how he felt. Garcia would run five miles, feel fine physically, but “but my brain would be tired.”

He woke up in the morning dreading the 12-round sparring contest that awaited him on Jasper Street and then struggled to focus in the ring.

“I would tell Danny to go under the hook and he would just get hit by the hook. I just told him that,” Angel Garcia said. “Then he would come to the corner. I could see it in him, but I just couldn’t figure it out. I thought maybe he had a bad day sparring.”

Garcia’s win over Amir Khan — who was then the No. 1-ranked welterweight — catapulted him in July of 2012 to the top of the division. But he said it was his win a year later against Lucas Matthysse that made people respect him. Garcia, again a heavy underdog, withstood Matthysse’s blows and knocked him down with a heavy combination on the way to a signature win.

A punishing right hand from Matthysse crushed Garcia’s chin in the 11th round, jolting his mouthpiece out of the ring. The mouthpiece is custom-made — Angel Garcia gets them from a shop at 35th and Allegheny — and is so tightly fitted that Angel Garcia has to reach into the back of his son’s mouth to remove it. That’s how powerful the shot was that Danny Garcia withstood.

“In the locker room during the postfight drug test, Danny’s urine was totally red. That’s how hard Matthysse was hitting his liver,” Angel Garcia said. “That’s how hard Matthysse was hitting him. He wanted to kill Danny.”

There was no longer any doubt after that night about Garcia’s might. So Garcia and his dad — who said he used to suffer from panic attacks so severe that it felt like his heart was going to jump out of his chest — figured he could rally the same way against anxiety.

“It’s a crazy thing,” Garcia said. “Some people will be like, ‘How can you have anxiety? How can you have stress? You have money.’ That has nothing to do with money. Then I sat back, ‘Man, I’m a jerk. Why am I stressing? There’s people who have nothing in this world.’ But it’s not really about money. It’s the thought, thinking about something that doesn’t exist, and it breaks you down. When you’re working so hard for so long, everyone goes through it.”

Danny Garcia stayed in shape during his layoff but he didn’t have a fight to prepare for. So he spent time with his family, watched his daughter grow up, hung out with his friends, and traveled. He didn’t feel right until about six months after the Spence fight.

Garcia didn’t seek therapy. He said he knew he just needed time away from the ring to feel refreshed.

“You don’t know how strong you are until you go through the fire,” he said. “I was telling my friend one time, we were in Miami, and we went to the mall. I said, ‘I used to dream about having big fights and now I have big fights and I don’t feel like doing it. What the hell is wrong with me? People would wish to be me right now. There’s fighters in this world who wish they could make millions of dollars when they fight. Now I’m in that position and I don’t feel like doing it.’ That’s when I knew, ‘This isn’t me. I’m Danny Garcia, I have to get back to being the real me. Go in there, get that money, and beat people up.’”

Angel Garcia said his son is happy again, which the trainer said is the key to being a good fighter. Garcia is no longer getting blasted during sparring sessions. Instead, he said he feels like a character from The Matrix with the way he can dodge a flying jab.

“I didn’t lose a step,” Garcia said.

He also said he learned how to manage his emotions, understanding things that could trigger him and knowing how to calm himself down when anxious feelings mount.

His fight on July 30 will be his first at 154 pounds as he moves to the super-welterweight class. Garcia has already been a world champion at 140 and 147 pounds and has the goal of becoming Philadelphia’s first three-division world champion. He’ll start his climb feeling refreshed.

“Now I come in here and feel happy and have fun. I feel like the old me,” Garcia said. “I feel good. I feel excited. I feel motivated. I feel happy. That’s how I know it’s going to be a good night for me. And I’m ready for whatever. In this game, you can feel good on fight night and then have one of the hardest fights of your life. I’m prepared to dig deep if I have to.”