By Thomas Gerbasi

As Daniel Franco dusted himself off from his first pro loss against Christopher Martin in March, there were no tears, no busted lockers, no plans to lock himself up in a dark room for six months. He just wanted to fight again.

“I wanted to get a fight in right away,” he said. “I didn’t want to take a big break after losing or anything like that. I didn’t feel tired, my head wasn’t messed up or anything, so I wanted to get right back on that horse.”

On May 12, less than two months after the defeat, the featherweight prospect got his wish, taking just 1:41 to halt Francisco Agustin Suarez in Mexico. It was far from a test, far from the kind of fight that would push Franco into deep waters, but it was a win and a move back in the right direction, leading him into Saturday’s matchup with Jose Haro for the vacant USBA featherweight title.

daniel-franco_4

But what about that loss to Martin, a seasoned and capable vet, but one who was on a 1-5 skid heading into the bout? Well, it was going well for Franco, who put Martin on the deck in the first round. But in the third, it was all over, two knockdowns sending the Riverside native down to defeat. That’s boxing.

“A lot of people looked at me like I was different because I wasn’t extremely upset, I wasn’t pissed off or angry,” Franco said. “I thought, ‘I’m better than that guy, I was dominating the entire fight, I was beating him, and I got caught with one punch and that’s the sport of boxing.’ Everything can change with one punch.”

Franco isn’t the first hot prospect to suffer an upset loss and he won’t be the last. It’s what happens now that determines whether “Twitch” is prospect or suspect, and he’s embracing that challenge.

“I’m not glad that it happened, but I’m glad that it happened now rather than on a world stage where everybody could see you or if I had a world championship on the line,” he said. “I know I’m not invincible, I know that people get knocked out in boxing, it’s part of the sport, and you have to keep on moving forward.”

If the 25-year-old Franco sounds like he’s got a better grip on the sport than most in his position, that would be accurate, and it also comes from being from a fighting family. So he has been around the game long enough to know what can happen when the bell rings.

A little over five years ago, in 2011, Franco’s brother Michael was the hot prospect, 19-0 and on his way up the featherweight ladder. Then he got knocked out by Orlando Cruz, and due to a shoulder injury suffered in a car accident, he never returned to the ring. Franco was there the entire way.

“My father said it a long time ago – it’s not if you get knocked out, but when,” he said. “Looking back to five, six years ago when my brother got knocked out, I thought he was invincible and I saw that first hand. I was in his corner, and if it would have affected me, I would have quit boxing way back then. But I’m still here.”

And with a win on Saturday, he gets the USBA title back, and with that comes an IBF ranking. But is the pressure of protecting his “0” off?

He laughs.

“There’s still a lot of pressure,” he said. “But every fight, the pressure gets released by every day that I push myself in training camp. If I know that I pushed myself hard, I know that I’ll be ready and I know that the other guy hasn’t trained as hard as me, I know he’s not as strong as me or as in shape as me. You just have to beat one person – and that’s either yourself or the other person that’s in the ring with you. I love that this sport tests my will and my ability. It tests my heart, it tests everything. It’s extremely difficult, but if it was an easy sport, I’m sure a lot of people would be boxing.”

He’s right, and he’s honest. Two traits often in short supply in the fight game. But if Franco has learned one thing about boxing, it’s that you can lie to yourself and the world all you want, but on fight night, there can be no more lies.

“I want to be honest,” he said. “I want to be honest with myself and I don’t want to hide from anything because when you get into the ring, the truth is always going to be shown.”