Ryan Garcia gives an in-depth interview with Fight Hype about all the confusion surrounding his next fight, with him seemingly going in many different directions, none of which have panned out thus far. Here’s some of what Garcia had to say on all the commotion while he gave himself a face massage.
Garcia on the all the confusion surrounding his next fight
“We were in talks to fight (Haney). I sent my team to go talk to Devin Haney’s team,” Garcia said. “Then I invited the people to have a say in who I fight next, ‘should it be Rolando Romero or should it be Devin Haney.’ The poll was close but ultimately Devin Haney won. So I wanted to give everybody that fight because the people voted and you should get what you voted for.
“Long story short: I was hanging out in Vegas, I’m having a great time, I’m hanging out with Floyd. I’m not going to lie, Floyd’s pretty influential. He’s like ‘Why would you do that? Why don’t you fight Rolly for the belt and then fight Devin Haney,’ gave me advice. I said that makes pretty much sense, but I told the people already I’m going to fight Devin.
“He said ‘some things change,’ basically what he said. I’m paraphrasing here, it’s a lot deeper than that and there was a lot more conversation…then I made a quick decision to be like ‘ok, Floyd, that makes sense. I’ll go get another belt, I’ll go get the WBO belt.’
“Start talking to Rolly’s team. I just throw out Cruz’s name because I always wanted to beat his ass for a long time. Then I was like ‘let’s talk to everybody.’ Shoot, my opens are open. I can make a fight with anybody…they need me, in a sense. But I also need them in a way, where it takes two to tango.
“Ultimately I have the more driving force and they’re more — they got boxing fans. I’m just a more well-known person is what I would like to say…I guess Rolly took offense (to me engaging multiple options), said ‘F you’, became dumb, then decided to go in negotiation with Cruz and then act like he’s in negotiations with me to try to use my name and then sweep it under the rug and go fight Cruz. They both used my name, pretty much, to build their fight.
“I don’t even know if he’s going to make a million dollars for this fight. He probably would’ve made up in the $5M range with me. And you really decided to get clipped for, what, $950k, maybe. It could be less. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”
On if he needs additional leverage to negotiate with the other top stars
“When you’re fighting against me, you just gotta know you’re not as big as me. That’s it. You just gotta know that, ‘I’m not as big as Ryan, I can have every belt in the book.’ I’m gonna respect it, I’m gonna try to make a deal based on ‘okay you have that, let’s throw in some extra change, some extra money for you.’ But you’re not bigger than me.
“No fighter is bigger than me, except some dudes. You know, Canelo, maybe. I don’t see anybody else bigger than me currently. And I’m probably the most relevant right now, for sure.”