Daniel Franco: 'Twitch' eyes move up featherweight ladder with a little boost from Andre Ward

Daniel Franco and his brothers discovered boxing one day long ago when they decided to bag baseball practice and hit the gym instead.

Franco wasn't very good at baseball, he says, because his vision wasn't very good. He liked football because he was really good at hitting kids, and was naturally aggressive.

But boxing, he quickly discovered, was perfect. He fell in love with the sport because of its "singularity." And vision didn't much matter. Being good at hitting kids did.

"It was really cool because it's just you and somebody else in the ring. Nobody else to let you down on a play, or nobody else to blame," the 24-year-old Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., resident tells Paste BN Sports. "I really loved the singularity of it. You get all the glory and you get all the blame."

Franco's older brother, Michael "Lil Warrior" Franco, was the first brother to go pro, and won his first 19 fights before getting knocked out in the first round by Orlando Cruz in 2012. He has not fought professionally since.

Daniel Franco turned pro in late 2010 and has amassed a record of 13-0-3 (8 KOs). In June 2015, Franco appeared on the undercard of Andre Ward's light heavyweight fight against Paul Smith at Oracle Arena in Oakland, Calif.

On Saturday night, Franco will grace a Ward undercard at Oracle for the third consecutive time, taking on Marcello Gallardo (7-3-2, 3 KOs) in an eight-round featherweight bout. The bout is not part of HBO's TV broadcast (10:30 p.m. ET), but Franco is just happy for the visibility and to get close to Ward, hoping a little greatness rubs off.

"It's really honorable to be on a big card like that and with such great fighters like Andre Ward," Franco says. "I just really like being amongst that type of fighter. I like being there and being able to share the same ring with him."

And when Ward fights, "I'm always there at ringside as close as possible to make sure I can obtain as much boxing knowledge as possible," says Franco, who has signed a four year contract with Roc Nation, which also promotes Ward. That at least puts them in the same ballpark.

Franco has one of the most unusual nicknames in the sport: "Twitch." It goes back to his earlier years.

"It kind of came about because of a bad habit I had when I was an amateur," Franco says. "I was really squared up . . . to my opponent, and my coach was always telling me to check my shoulder or check my chin to my shoulder, so what I would do is touch my chin to my front shoulder to make sure my shoulders were sideways. If it wasn't there to touch, I'd have to turn my shoulder back a little bit more and because of that, it turned into a little bit of a habit, to make sure I was always in the right area. That's how that name came about."

Unlike many boxers, if not most, Franco comes from the middle class and even went to college for a while after high school, studying psychology. But the pull of hitting people was stronger than the pull of hitting the books and Franco decided to forgo school and pursue a boxing career. Someday, he says, he expects to finish what he started.

"I think I'll go back because education is so important," he says, "and I think I'm a pretty bright kid. I've always done well in school, in high school I was always on the honor roll. It's just that right now I choose to be a boxer. This is what I really want. I have to train myself completely. "

Franco's team is led by his father and trainer, Al Franco, who actually bought a gym in Rancho Cucamonga, known as "The War Zone", so his sons would have somewhere to train. The father-son dynamic doesn't work for everyone, but it works for the Francos.

"Sometimes I think it is a little bother, but for the most part it works really well because we know when to separate father-son time from fighter-trainer time," the son says. "It's really good in that at the boxing gym, I say 'yes sir, no sir,' and we get along really well and I think it has brought us closer. We've bonded really well just over the sport."

And the fact that dad is looking out for his best interests "is really helpful and comforting," Franco adds. "Especially when I'm getting close to a fight, it's nothing but him and I working together."

At 5-foot-9, Franco is tall for a 126-pounder, and he builds his game around that height.

"That really comes into play with my boxing style," he says. "I use my skill, I use my distance and I think everything that I have, everything I do is centered around what my body is. I have long arms and I think everything I do, specifically, is perfect. I'm a boxer, but I do have a pretty big punch if I really want to dig in."

He admits he might be pushed to do that against Gallardo.

"He's really tough, he wants to make the fight really ugly," Franco says of his opponent. "Every video I've seen of him he throws looping punches, big overhand rights and he's really busy. He always pushes the guy he's in there against into a fire fight."

Beyond Gallardo, Franco envisions moving from prospect to contender status by this time in 2017.

"I picture myself being considered among the best fighters in the 126-pound weight class," Franco says boldly. "I want to be considered the same caliber of Jo Jo Diaz, and Oscar Valdez and all of them."