Ryan “Kingry” Garcia is unhappy with Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya about a comment from him about how the 20-year-old’s social media popularity hasn’t carried over to his boxing career inside the ring. Garcia is hugely popular on social media with 3.4 million followers.
With the way that Garcia has been openly criticizing De La Hoya on social media, it doesn’t look like it’s going to end well in this relationship. Unless something changes, it’s likely Garcia will be gone once his contract with Golden Boy is up. De La Hoya wants to salvage the relationship with Ryan if he can, but it’s going to be difficult.
Garcia has past wins over Jayson Velez, Braulio Rodriguez, Carlos Morales and Jose Lopez. Ryan had problems beating Morales in a 10 round majority decision last year. The performance by Garcia showed that he’s far behind other young lightweights in Devin Haney and Teofimo Lopez. Those guys are close to the same age as Garcia, but fighting on a higher level.
Garcia’s Tweet about De La Hoya not believing in him likely stems from this comment by Oscar in an interview with the latimes.com:
“It just hasn’t. That’s the bottom line,” said De La Hoya to the latimes.com about Garcia’s career as a pro not living up to what he’s doing on social media. “So how do we do that? He has to win a world title. And who knows how to get him there? I do. Don’t listen to all these voices in your ear telling you, ‘Hey, you have 3 million followers, you’re supposed to be getting paid this much.’ Don’t listen to them. Just trust the process and you will get there.”
It’s possible that Garcia can eventually win a world title, but right that would seem like a long shot. It’s possible that Garcia could win a world title at some point, but it might involve a vacant belt or him facing a weaker champion. Garcia isn’t going to beat WBA/WBC/WBO lightweight champion Vasiliy Lomachenko. Devin Haney would be a nightmare for Garcia as well, even though he’s the same age as him. Haney is a more well rounded fighter with hand speed, power, reflexes and defensive skills. Garcia has hand speed, but the power.
Ryan is also upset with De La Hoya about him failing to set him up with a fight against Romero Duno last weekend after his opponent Avery Sparrow fell out of the fight after an arrest. The highly ranked lightweight contender (18-0, 15 KOs) wanted a bump up in pay to face Duno (21-1, 16 Os), but the fight didn’t happen. That’s the type of fight that Golden Boy would have wanted to build up rather than have it take place last Saturday.
