By: Sean Crose
“The Ryan Garcia fight is the biggest fight in boxing, in my opinion,” so WBO welterweight world champion Devin Haney told Ring Magazine’s Inside the Ring program. “It does so much for me and my career, my resume, but like I said, he has to be realistic in these negotiations. I’m not here to just take anything. Ryan Garcia, when the ball was in his court, he didn’t make weight, he showed up with a positive drug test…it was all over the place.”
True enough. Those who saw the leadup to Haney’s controversial bout against Garcia saw pre-fight hype nearly descend into chaos. The announcement of Garcia’s subsequent drug tests not only cost him the fight (his victory became a no contest) but also cost him a good chunk of his reputation. And while Garcia recently had a brilliant ring return against Mario Barrios a few week’s back, Haney isn’t keen on a repeat of his last experience with Garcia.
“We’re not going to do it like that this time around,” he told Inside the Ring. “We’re going to do it the right way. If he doesn’t want to do it the right way, then we’ll move on. We’ll go on to fight the guy that beat him and the guy that he doesn’t want to rematch. He’s not screaming Rolly’s name. If that is the case, then we go and we fight Rolly, and if Ryan Garcia wants to get realistic, then we can make that fight happen now or later.”
Although Garcia ended up testing positive for Ostarine, Haney is honest enough to admit he wasn’t at his best when he and Garcia threw down in Brooklyn last spring “I came into that fight overconfident,” admitted Haney. “I felt like a guy like Ryan couldn’t beat me. I thought that I was going to run him over. I didn’t take him as seriously as I should have. I’m not saying in training camp or anything like that, because I always work hard. I always push myself to the limit, but I think that mentally, I was overlooking him.” It’s a mistake he doesn’t plan on making again – if he and Garcia are to actually face off in the ring a second time.
It would no doubt a fight fans would be quite eager to see. There’s a sense of unfinished business about the whole thing, after all.
