Bill Haney Puts Ryan Garcia on the Scales of Judgment!
Is lightweight fighter Ryan “King Ry” Garcia (23-0, 19 KO’s) scared witless of undisputed lightweight champion Devin “The Dream” Haney (28-0, 15 KO’s)? Well, Bill Haney, who is the lead trainer, manager and father of The Dream, certainly feels that this is what the facts, history and Garcia’s own words seem to reflect. Within the 135-pound division, it has long been known that Haney, Garcia along with Teofimo Lopez and Regular WBA lightweight champion Gervonta “Tank” Davis were among the standout talents there.
During his tenure there however, Haney has always had seemingly unreasonable difficulty finding a willing, big-time dance partner. Ironically, the other three fighters have, at least verbally, come across as more willing to face one another rather than Devin Haney. Of those three however, Bill would single King Ry out as being the slipperiest of them all. Honestly speaking though, there is a good reason for this.
RYAN IS A DUCK!
At one point, Ryan Garcia was very boisterous about his willingness to tangle with anyone at 135-pounds, including Haney. He even went so far as beating tough UK boxer Luke Campbell to become The Dream’s WBC mandatory challenger as the interim champion.
Then quizzically, rather than fight the champ, he vacated the Interim belt only to sit out for a little over a year. Since coming back, Garcia beat Emmanuel Tagoe and a worn and weathered Javier Fortuna. In a recent interview with ThaBoxingVoice, Bill Haney pulled few punches when discussing the evasive King Ry.
“Ryan is not the mandatory anymore, so we can’t even really talk shit to Ryan because Ryan ducked the whole division! He ducked out! First he was the interim, right? And then he vacated and Jo Jo [Diaz] beat Javier Fortuna, then he [Garcia] comes back and beats Javier Fortuna – the guy that Jo Jo Diaz just beat, and then everybody says that the fight is big between him and Tank. How could a fight be that big with him and Tank when it’s not even necessarily fair? I mean, is Ryan ready?!”
MAKE IT MAKE SENSE
At the moment, Garcia is breaking his neck to drum up interest in a potential showdown with Tank Davis. While Davis has taken a shining to this match up in the past, he has been nowhere near as enthusiastic about the dustup as King Ry lately. Sadly, and more to Bill Haney’s point, Garcia has already stated that if he can’t get a fight with Davis, his next target would be Teofimo Lopez at 140-pounds. Lopez has yet to fight since suffering his first professional defeat at the hands of George Kambosos.
With Haney, technically having no fall opponent, it is rather glaring that King Ry would rather fight a guy coming off a loss rather than compete for undisputed status. Yet, no matter what their reasons and motivations are, we’ll just have to sit back and watch how it all plays out!
Reading Time: 3 minutes
By: Bakari Simpson
