GARCIA’S CHOICE
It has been an unusual week in Brooklyn. In fact, it has been an unusual 10 weeks. So much so that the score Devin Haney and Ryan Garcia are about to settle seems almost trivial.
I can’t ever remember a super fight having a build up with such conflicting feeling.
On one hand, these are two young stars, both with the charisma, temperament and talent to forge an iconic boxing rivalry. Yet on the other, it is a story of two unnerving opposites.
In Haney, you have the standard-bearer. A man who, alongside his father Bill, has manufactured a machine in which every cog holds value. It is almost, if possible, too perfect.
Then you have Garcia, whose unique ability to both promote and fight has been chequered by what can only be described as one of the more unsettling behavioural turns.
Of course, every fight needs publicising. Even Canelo Alvarez does a press tour nowadays.
However, these two perhaps needed no more than a little nudge. This skilful pair even shared six ill-tempered bouts as fervent amateurs, ticking yet another box in the sales pitch.
Yet it is Garcia’s erratic behaviour that has grabbed headlines as we edge closer to fight night.
There were hopes that ‘King Ry’ was, after all, just playing the Jester, that he was pulling off one of the best - and strangest - PR stunts in boxing history. Those hopes quickly died.
Tuesday’s face-off atop the Empire State Building saw Garcia arrive shirtless, wearing a backpack.
I’m all for individuality, but screaming like a banshee whilst dressed like a rebel schoolchild on his Duke of Edinburgh award was not how I expected fight week proceedings to begin.
If that wasn’t abnormal enough, then feast on the fight week ending.
Garcia came in a whopping 3.2 lbs overweight, thus surrendering not only his shot at the WBC title, but also $1.5 million in forfeit. What a shocking handshake that turned out to be.
It did, in one way, feel the only acceptable ending to a knobbly 10 weeks post-announcement.
To be fair, those 10 weeks were hardly quiet, as Garcia abused the ‘Illuminati’, found a home remedy cancer cure, and had his social media access revoked like a ‘prisoner’.
I guess we should’ve known that things were never going to run smoothly.
I suppose we can celebrate the fact that we are now here at fight night and, regardless of the build-up, should see at the very least some pockets of elite boxing between the two.
If we don’t, then I guess we can all tune in to Garcia’s social media for our entertainment fix come Sunday afternoon.
What a strange old world boxing is.
Oscar Bevis
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