Ryan Garcia planning April return, ranks his favorite knockouts
Ryan Garcia expects to return on April 2, though he didn’t name an opponent.
Ryan Garcia is looking to get his career going again soon, and says he’ll be back in the ring in early April.
“The resume of my career starts April 2nd, it should be either in LA or Las Vegas, most likely Vegas,” Garcia told Noah Beck. “Look forward to the announcement of the fight and my opponent.”
Garcia has called out big names like Gervonta “Tank” Davis, of course, but nobody actually thinks that’s going to happen right now. He also had a lot of talk for the man Davis just beat in December, Isaac Cruz, but recent reports are that veterans Mercito Gesta and Saul Rodriguez are the more likely options.
Garcia last fought in Jan. 2021, stopping Luke Campbell in the seventh round. He had a mental health break that canceled a fight with Javier Fortuna, and then underwent hand surgery, which canceled a November bout with Joseph Diaz Jr, who had taken Garcia’s spot and beaten Fortuna in the summer.
Garcia talked about the mental health break, the Campbell fight, and more with Beck, too.
On his social media popularity
“It’s given me freedom. I don’t have to be desperate for fights, I don’t have to be desperate to the promoters or anybody, really, because I make enough money outside of the ring. Obviously the cons are people not giving me any credit for what I do, but at the end of the day I feel like, with all my amateur background and then now as a professional fighter, myself, I feel like I’ve done enough to prove to myself that I am one of the top fighters in the world. And I am going to prove that I am the best fighter in my weight class.”
On the mental health break Garcia took in 2021
“I decided after my fight in January 2021, I decided to take a mental health break to recover. I was struggling deep within myself. Anybody who knows boxing knows if you’re not 100 percent mentally, you’re not gonna be there 100 percent physically, and you can die in the ring, so I took that pretty serious. ... I feel great coming back. It was not really a comeback to me, I’m resuming where I left off. Man, I feel great. I’m gonna come back just as strong and powerful, and when those knockouts come, I guarantee you everyone’s gonna shut up and it’s gonna be like nothing happened.”
On his top five knockouts
5) Fernando Vargas
4) Braulio Rodriguez
3) Miguel Carrizoza
2) Francisco Fonseca
1) Luke Campbell
On getting dropped by Luke Campbell
“I had trained my mind for a hard fight, I had trained my mind for war. I knew the fight wasn’t going to be easy. There was no way it could be easy. This dude’s an Olympic gold medalist, he’s a very experienced pro, he’s older (than me). I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, so when I got dropped, I was more shocked, because I’ve never been dropped in my life. It was like a flash of white — I got hit, and I see a flash of white. I’m already standing up, so I kind of registered I got knocked down, and I looked at my coach, like, ‘Don’t worry, I’m gonna get him.’
“The first thing I thought to myself was, ‘Go right at him. Don’t let him think he’s got you.’ He even said after the fight, like, he couldn’t go after me at that moment, because I appeared like I was OK. and he knows my power. He didn’t want to walk into one. I was a little, like, my equilibrium might have been a little off, but not too bad. It kinda cleared up within, like, 30 seconds. I came back to the corner, felt great, and looked at my coach and said, ‘He can’t do shit to me.’ Those were my exact words. And I knew I was in for a dogfight, but I knew he could not out-work me. I knew for a fact, no matter what he did, I’m gonna out-work him, I’m gonna hit him harder, and I’m gonna catch him.”