After watching all of “the madness” that transpired at Friday’s Ryan Garcia-Devin Haney press conference, there was one takeaway.
“We’re heading to the finish line,” former 140-pound champion Chris Algieri said from Barclays Center, where he watched Garcia come in a staggering 3.2 points overweight for his second title fight in a year, with unbeaten champion Haney (31-0, 15 KOs) vowing to finish his former amateur rival.
In addition to sabotaging his opportunity to wear the belt he has long insisted he craves, Garcia (24-1, 20 KOs) has participated in one of the most maddening promotions in some time, punctuating it by showing up two hours late for Friday’s ceremonial weigh-in, where he sipped from what he was said was a beer bottle before revealing his overweight figure.
“People like to watch train wrecks so they can gossip,” said Paulie Malignaggi while joining Algieri on Friday’s episode of ProBox TV’s “Deep Waters.” “This guy [Garcia] has been a train wreck the whole time. Ryan is his own walking train wreck.”
Former welterweight champion Malignaggi was floored by what he saw, with Garcia soberly transforming a boxer’s crushing, missed-weight moment into a social media scene.
His weight was “not even close – nor did he try, nor did he care. Wild, wild stuff.”
Algieri watched both the Haney and Garcia teams approach the weigh-in stage as if “on a mission,” with Haney’s father/trainer/manager, Bill Haney, appearing unnerved before he and Garcia’s promoter and former world champion Bernard Hopkins confronted each other on stage.
“There was a lot of edginess,” Algieri said.
“In terms of how this promotion missed, not only are the fans starting to turn on Ryan, they don’t like the antics. It’s cringe-worthy.”
From his perch, Algieri noticed the undercard fighters’ response to the wasted time waiting for Haney and Garcia to appear Friday.
“They looked dejected and pissed and angry, shaking their heads,” Algieri said. “They had to wait two hours for a mock weigh-in. Everyone already knew Ryan didn’t make weight. This is a media weigh-in, and both fighters were two hours late for this?”
When they finally appeared, Algieri was stunned to see some of Garcia’s entourage “didn’t look like boxing people … it looked like random guys in suits. Odd, very strange.”
At times, the promotion has felt like a Garcia social media campaign, and his Instagram audience has blown up to 10.5 million.
That audience is there. But will it translate to strong live-gate sales and pay-per-view buys?
That’s what Haney was counting on in choosing the boxer-influencer as an opponent. This turn Garcia made, however, was not expected, and the challenger appears closer to a career in Hollywood than to ever stepping in the ring again.
By missing weight, Garcia made good on a bet he made with Haney a day earlier, and paid him $1.5 million for the sin.
Now, we find out if Haney can make him pay an even deeper toll by being subjected to a beatdown in the ring.
“It’s been an over-the-top promotion, but I don’t think it’s been over the top in the way it attracts you to the fight,” Malignaggi said.
“Who knows? Maybe this [madness] is a wild card and a lot of the casual [fans] will buy into it. Do casuals even [care about] a world title? Probably not. They just want to see the fight.”
Will it sell well?
When Garcia drew 1.2 million buys for his April 2023 seventh-round TKO loss to Gervonta Davis, he had Baltimore’s popular Davis as a co-participant in selling the bout. This time, it’s Haney, whose concern is tightly focused on winning the fight, not so much in promoting it.
“Boxing fans and the boxing community are disappointed with how all of this has played out,” Malignaggi said. “Honestly, it’s been disrespectful to the sport and the way you’re supposed to carry yourself.
“All of boxing just wants to see this happen and go away, and then we can get back to our fights, the ones we are really excited about. Because this one … it’s almost a soap opera. I don’t think anything they’re doing is about promoting a fight.”