Junior welterweight contender Ryan Garcia 24-1 (20) is already plotting his next move after he faces WBC 140-pound champion Devin ‘The Dream’ Haney 31-0 (15) in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 20.
According to Garcia, the plan after winning his first world title is to face WBO champion Teofimo Lopez 19-1 (13) in a two-belt unification bout.
“After I beat Haney, I’d kind of like to fight Teofimo. I think that’s my next one,” said Ryan Garcia to Jack Alter’s YouTube channel.
“We’re going to break the internet even more.”
Garcia and Haney have history dating back to the amateurs where they boxed six times and went 3-3. The ledger might show them as even, but there is one key difference according to Garcia.
“He’s weak when he gets touched. He remembers what I did to him,” Garcia said.
“I barely know what he did. He doesn’t even hit hard. He won by points and when I won, he got fucked up.
“There’s a difference. When I hit him, I had his ass rocked many times.”
The 25-year-old Los Angelan is one fight removed from his seventh-round knockout loss to reigning WBA lightweight champion Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis 29-0 (27) last April. Garcia was down twice in the seventh and barely won a round.
But despite the powerful Davis, 29, of Baltimore, Maryland boasting one of the highest knockout ratios of any active boxer, Garcia insists his power isn’t all that it’s made out to be.
“He can not hit hard I’m telling you. It’s his accuracy,” said Garcia, who knocked out Oscar Duarte 26-2-1 (21) in the eighth round of their bout in Houston in December.
“The punches that you don’t see are the ones that hurt you. Not the ones that you do see.
“There are some people that even if you see it, that shit hurts. He’s not like that. He’s what he is, he’s an accurate sniper. He’s a sniper.”
That fight wasn’t personal though, unlike the Haney bout. Garcia let the world know what he thinks of Haney and his father and trainer Bill Haney in a recent interview on the DAZN Boxing Show.
“I just don’t like people like them,” Garcia said. “They’re fake, they’re phony, they have no substance to them.
“Even the way he boxes, it’s like he has no substance. No anything behind it, no weight. He’s fake diamonds.
“How could you tell the difference between a real diamond and a fake diamond or fake gold and real gold? The weight.
“They’re fake, a hundred percent. Phonies.”
Asked by Jack Alter is he would ever entertain a fight against WBA junior welterweight champion Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero 15-1 (13), Garcia was emphatic in his response.
“Fuck Rolly Romero. I’m never going to fight him,” he said, adding that there’s a reason he’s called an ‘influencer boxer’. “Facts. I do influence everybody. I’m influential.”
