Oscar De La Hoya has completely dismissed the idea of a Ryan Garcia-Devin Haney rematch.
“I see no need for it,” De La Hoya, Garcia’s promoter, recently told Fight Hub TV. “Ryan Garcia destroyed [Haney], and that’s the bottom line.”
De La Hoya conveniently omitted the facts that Garcia came into the fight more than three pounds overweight and tested positive for the banned substance ostarine afterwards – an infraction for which he is serving a one-year ban from boxing. This alone is reason enough that Garcia “destroying” Haney is very much not the bottom line.
Those unfair advantages aside, one could still make the case that Garcia didn’t “beat” Haney by all that much. Garcia scoring three hard knockdowns and his immense fan base rallying to decry the draw scorecard on the night obscure the fact that Garcia fought in spurts and had very little success when he wasn’t hurting Haney. (To say nothing of the fact that Garcia was deducted a point, canceling out one of those knockdowns.)
A reasonable scorecard might have awarded Haney Rounds 2 through 6, and maybe also Rounds 8 and 9, when Garcia failed to take advantage of a big Round 7. Writers such as Chris Mannix and Mike Coppinger scored the fight for Haney at the time, though the dissent quickly fell away amid the ensuing controversy over Garcia’s failed drug test.
“There’s fighters here [at the Ring magazine awards] like Teofimo [Lopez] that we can match up with Ryan and make a terrific, terrific event,” De La Hoya said.
“I was once a fighter, and I’m a promoter now, but I think like a fighter – I wanna see the best fight the best.”
Boxing fans want the same. But they might just want a level playing field between the fighters as well.
Owen Lewis is a former intern at Defector media and writes and edits for BoxingScene. His beats are tennis, boxing, books, travel and anything else that satisfies his meager attention span. He is on Bluesky.
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