Dominant Performance By Garcia
Photo: Special to the NY Beacon
By Joshua Garcia
King Ryan, as Ryan Garcia loves to call himself, showed exactly why he earned the name. Garica lit up the big stage at the Barclays Center in the Borough of Kings Saturday, and he had the Brooklyn crowd riled up like Kevin Durant actually hit the game-winner against the Milwaukee Bucks.
Some estimates had Devin Haney the champion, as a 600:1 favorite as the two men stepped through the ropes to face each other for the first time as professionals. Their six amatueur battles as kids couldn’t have been less relevant as Ryan Garcia after months of controversy, completely quieted doubters with a dominant performance of power and skill.
Considered a modern-day spin off of Floyd Mayweather, the defense first Devin Haney ranks as the top defensive fighter in the sport along with Shakur Stephenson. Saturday night at Barclays, Ryan Garcia didn’t just put a hole in Haney’s boat, he sunk it and all its treasures like the Titanic.
Following a 12 round exhibition of the use of his best weapon, no fainting, no trickery, no illusion, just a vicious left hook that lands and inflicts damage like deja vu. What Devin Haney’s team promised would not be their demise and the constant claims that it was all Ryan Garcia had in his toolbox, it was the very thing that decided the fight after it dropped Haney to the floor not once or twice, but thrice.
Haney entered the primetime showdown allowing his previous opponents to land only one in every four power shots against him, facing Garcia he finished with 41% of the body shots landing, just shy of half of the heaviest punches thrown at him. That’s not a good recipe for success when you are the smaller man and your opponent came in three pounds overweight.
All the questions coming into the fight were of Ryan Garcia slacking on his training, sincerity of the fight, mental stability and future of his career, but they have all been silenced with a 12 round showcase of focus and growth in his craft. Garcia claims his antics leading up to the fight were trolling to throw the boxing world and his opponent off, but behind the scenes Garcia placed $2 Million on himself to win and found himself with a $12 Million winning betting slip on top of his purse for the fight, and all the juice in the boxing world for the month, after proving haters wrong and showing his work ethic is stronger than ever when the bright lights come on.
