Ryan Garcia and his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions have accepted the Luke Campbell fight, according to WBC president Mauricio Suliaman. He broke the news tonight on Garcia (20-0, 17 KOs) vs. Campbell (20-3, 16 KOs) being confirmed. The negotiations will start right away between the promoters for the fight.
This is a surprise because a lot of people thought Ryan or his promoters at Golden Boy wouldn’t take the fight with Campbell. It’s a risky one for the 21-year-old King Ryan because he has no experience against good opposition yet.
Ryan and Luke will be fighting for the vacant interim WBC lightweight title, and the winner will be mandatory to WBC 135-pound champion Devin Haney. The interim WBC title is of less importance for Garcia and Campbell than the winner getting a mandated title shot against Haney (24-0, 15 KOs). That’s the real prize.
Now, all that needs to be done is for the Garcia-Campbell fight to be negotiated by Matchroom Boxing and Golden Boy. This might not be an easy fight to negotiate given that you’ve got egos involved.
The young 21-year-old Ryan Garcia will probably want to the bigger split, and that might not sit too well with the 32-year-old Campbell. He’s got more experience than King Ryan, and he’s been involved in bigger fights as a professional. If you count the gold medal Campbell won in the 2012 Olympics for Great Britain, he deserves to be A-side.
Here’s the problem. Campbell isn’t well known in the U.S with the millions of casual boxing fans, and that’ll make it hard for his promoter Eddie Hearn to justify getting a 50-50 split.
You can argue that Ryan Garcia is much better known in the UK than Campbell is in the U.S. So if Golden Boy insists on Ryan getting the bigger cut of the pie, then it could make negotiations difficult if not impossible with Matchroom. Hearn has got to be realistic.
Campbell, 32, is coming off of a loss to Vasiliy Lomachenko last year, and he’s not in a good position to ask for a bigger cut against Ryan.
Golden Boy Promotions failed to set up a fight between their fighter Canelo Alvarez and the Matchroom Boxing promoted Billy Joe Saunders and Callum Smith. That failure to negotiate an important fight could potentially impact the Garcia vs. Campbell negotiations as well.
What also complicates the negotiations is that the WBO ordered Ryan Garcia and Emmanuel Tagoe to fight in a title eliminator. The WBO ordered the fight earlier on Monday, and a lot of boxing fans immediately expected Ryan to scrape the Campbell fight and instead take the easier one against Tagoe.
