LAS VEGAS – Ryan Garcia, favored, sobered and calmed by a trusted voice, behaved accordingly Thursday in his final news conference with WBC welterweight titleholder Mario Barrios.
Exactly what this sharp departure from some of his unhinged news conferences of the recent past means will be seen Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena when the 27-year-old Garcia, 24-2 (20 KOs), heads to his fourth title fight in as many years, seeking his first belt.
In one telling sequence, DAZN analyst and news conference moderator Chris Mannix asked a question that he said would otherwise be “generic” for other fighters but “appropriate” for the charismatic boxer who has struggled over recent years with mental health and substance use.
“How are you feeling? … Where are you mentally and physically?” Mannix asked.
Said a subdued, focused Garcia: “I could do a lot of talking and say I’ve prepared the best I can, or you can just look at me and see the shape I’m in, how I look, and have your own opinion. That speaks enough.”
After riding a horse to a 2024 session with Devin Haney, drinking from a beer bottle on the ceremonial weigh-in scale and then admitting he wished he could withdraw from fighting Rolando “Rolly” Romero last year, Garcia has left a more stable, serious impression after a training camp spent with his father and former lead trainer Henry Garcia.
“There’s no stopping him,” Henry Garcia said during the event. “When you have mind, body and soul, you’ve got a winning fighter. I am so proud of my son.”
Garcia’s longtime promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, sought to capture the essence of the scene, with Garcia standing as a -260 betting favorite over a criticized titlist who has kept his belt despite back-to-back draws against veteran Abel Ramos and Hall of Fame eight-division champion Manny Pacquiao at age 46.
“I’ve been in this game forever, and I see something in his eyes that only fighters see,” De La Hoya said of Garcia. “I can see that fire, that spark, that he went back to his father, going old-school for that world-title.
“This is a fight that he’s been waiting for all his life. And guess what? He is ready – one million per cent. This is going to be one of those action-packed fights because Barrios doesn’t back down. He’s the world champion. I love Ryan’s chance because of what I see and smell in the air – he’s ready, he’s prepared, and it’s going to be a war.”
Garcia said he’s focused on intense training while attempting to outdo the work he anticipates his former trainer Joe Goossen has put Barrios through after aligning with the Texas fighter for this bout.
Goossen’s switch to Barrios after he was replaced by Garcia following three fights together, including the 2023 TKO loss to Gervonta Davis, “is an advantage for me. I know how his training – the speedbag drills, the bag work,” Garcia said. “I know I can train even better because I’ve trained exactly like Joe trains and done everything he said. Joe knows there’s no better runner than me, roadwork-wise.
“He knows I can push it and be a mean motherfucker, and come Saturday night, I’m going to be a mean motherfucker.”
The reunion with his father, Garcia said, “does feel like old times. There’s been a couple moments where it feels like a 2020 throwback with [people] coming by the gym. It brought me back to when I was 8 years old – all the hard work I’ve been putting in, throwing everything back. Technically, we are undefeated together and we’re going to continue the streak.”
Garcia spoke as if winning the belt is a foregone conclusion, an achievement that could propel the fighter with more than 12 million Instagram followers to the sport’s popularity stratosphere.
“Two things are going to happen Saturday night: We’ll have a new world champion and we’ll have a new face of boxing,” Garcia manager Guadalupe Valencia said.
Wielding a hellacious left hook that dropped Devin Haney three times in their 2024 no-contest and also decked former lightweight title challenger Luke Campbell on a body shot, Garcia put it this way:
“With this championship, I feel this is going to make my dad’s life. This is going to do something great for him and his heart. Of course, it’s going to be great for me and I’m going to hold it with honor and pride, and be the best champion I can be,” Garcia said. “I’m ready now as a fighter and a person to do that. You’re going to see a whole new rise of the King Ryan empire, and I’m excited.”
Goossen listened intently and then backed his new fighter.
“Mario has been a model fighter, exceeded expectations. He knows Ryan’s a tough guy. That’s why he worked so hard. I’ve got the champion of the world here, and we’ve put in the work. I like my guy in the fight,” Goossen said.
“I predict the opposite of what their team is predicting. Mario said to me, ‘I don’t think Ryan Garcia knows what’s coming,’ and I believe him.”
Garcia turned to his bank of experience in response.
“There’s not a lot I haven’t seen in the sport of boxing – [after a] long amateur career, lots of sparring, lots of fights. I hear lots of things about his sparring, about his training, but you can’t really go off of that,” Garcia said of Barrios.
“So I’m preparing myself the best that I possibly can and now when I step into that ring I know myself, that I’ll be at 100 per cent. So now we’ll just have to see where he is when we get in there.”
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.
