By Dan Ambrose: Ryan ‘Kingry’ Garcia (15-0, 13 KOs) will be fighting this Saturday night against Carlos “The Solution” Morales (17-2-3, 6 KOs) in a 10 round fight on September 1 at the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio, California. The fight will be streamed on Facebook Watch and Golden Boy Fight Night Page. Garcia and Morales will be fighting at lightweight with no world titles at stake.
Morales says he’s known ‘Kingry’ Garcia for a long time, as they trained in the same gym, and he says he still has the safe “goofball” personality that he had back then. However, Morales says he’s it’s not going to be fun and games when he gets Garcia inside the ring on Saturday night because this is about business. Morales doesn’t plan on making the fight a game. He’s coming to take care of business and add Garcia’s scalp to his resume.
With his huge following on social media, Ryan Garcia is really excited about his fight with Morales being streamed on Facebook on Saturday night. Garcia sees this as an ideal situation for him, and he expects the fight to bring in tremendous ratings due to his huge following. We’ll have to see if that’s the case or not. It’s not a big fight, but neither has any of Garcia’s past opponents and he’s brought in good ratings for those fights. If the Garcia-Morales fight does do huge numbers, it could create a monster in which Golden Boy feeds Ryan opponents that will bring in bigger numbers each time out but not necessarily are good fighters. The hardcore boxing fans don’t want to see Garcia pampered by Golden Boy by having him fight garbage opposition in order to milk his following and build up an inflated resume of weak opposition.
Garcia shows promise as a good contender with nifty boxing skills. The best thing Garcia has going for him right now besides his legions of younger fans on social media is his youth. Garcia can wait out fighters like Gervonta Davis, Alberto Machado and Miguel Berchelt until they get older and are forced to move out of the super featherweight division. Garcia will be there to move into one of their places as a champion. Of course, if some younger talent with punching power emerges in the weight class, then Garcia will likely be in the same boat as he is now in not having enough punching power to deal with guys like Gervonta, Berchelt, Tevin Farmer, Masayuki Ito and Machado.
This Saturday’s Garcia vs. Morales fight boils down to these areas:
– Power: Morales
– Speed:Garcia
– Ring IQ: Garcia
– Experience: Morales slight edge
– Mobility: Garcia
– Hometown advantage: Garcia. This area will make it VERY hard for Morales to win this fight, because he’s the visiting fighter in Garcia’s hometown on a Golden Boy Promotions card. Morales might need a knockout for him to have a chance of winning the contest. This might be another Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin situation where the visiting fighter won’t be given a decision win no matter what he does.
Garcia hasn’t beaten anyone talented, but he’s built up a huge following on social media. He’s a social media draw with over 1.1 million followers on instagram. Ryan has a lot of fans, but many of them are girls, who are into him with the way he looks. You can say that Garcia is great attracting casual fans, but not the ones that are knowledgeable about his career and know about the level of opposition that he’s faced. In his younger days, Oscar De La Hoya had the same ability to attract a lot of girls to follow his career.
Normally fighters become popular after they’ve accomplished a lot in boxing. In Garcia’s case, he’s done things backwards. He’s built a huge following first on social media without having beaten anyone of note. Garcia has shown that a fighter can become popular just by how he looks and how he acts without him needing to beat talented opposition. In some ways it mirrors what Saul Canelo Alvarez has done in becoming popular without beating anyone talented. In Garcia’s last fight against Jayson Velez on May 4, he brought in 7,000 fans, which is a good number for a prospect without a great amateur background. Oscar De La Hoya captured an Olympic gold medal in 1992, and he brought in huge crowds as soon as he turned pro in the same year, but he had a great amateur background. Ryan Garcia didn’t compete in the Olympics. He did have a lot of fights as an amateur in finishing his career with a 215-15 record. But in the amateurs, Garcia was easily beaten by the likes of Devin Haney.
“He has the charisma, and he has the ‘it’ factor,” De La Hoya said to ESPN.com. “It’s a matter of testing him up in the ring, and if he passes the test with flying colors, we have something special on our hands. I’m actually guiding his career very carefully and paying attention to his career very carefully because with this guy’s following and his potential, he can be the next superstar in boxing,” De La Hoya said.
De La Hoya wants to see Garcia KO Morales, which is easier said than done, because he’s never been stopped before in his six-year pro career. Carlos Morales has only faced one really good fighter in his career in Alberto Machado, who beat him by a 10 round unanimous decision in August 2017. Machado is a huge puncher, but he was unable to stop Morales. If Garcia can stop Morales, it would be a big accomplishment, but it wouldn’t mean that he has the kind of punching power than Machado possesses. He’s not that kind of a puncher and he never will be.
You can’t say that Carlos Morales is being a test for Garcia. This is a step down from his last fight against Velez. Golden Boy put Garcia in a test in his last fight, and he didn’t look that great. A real test would be Garcia facing Miguel Roman or Francisco Vargas. Morales is more of a high level journeyman than a real test for Garcia. I don’t think Garcia is ready for a real test, and I doubt that Golden Boy believes that as well. If they did, they wouldn’t have matched him against Morales. They would have put him in with someone like Roman or Vargas or Alberto Machado.
Despite Ryan Garcia talking about wanting to fight WBA super featherweight champion Gervonta ‘Tank’ David, Golden Boy promotions is keeping their ultra-confident in the slow lane by not making that fight. Garcia’s last performance against the tough 30-year-old Jayson ‘La Maravilla’ Velez (26-5-1, 18 KOs) wasn’t an impressive one. Garcia struggled to defeat Velez by a 10 round unanimous decision in their last May in Carson, California. Garcia was hit a lot in the fight, and he didn’t show the type of talent that suggests that he’ll one day beat fighters like Gervonta Davis, Miguel Berchelt or Alberto Machado. Golden Boy’s decision to match Ryan Garcia against the 28-year-old Morales appears to be a move made in response to how bad he looked against Velez. It would be crazy for Golden Boy to match Ryan against a better fighter than Velez in his next fight because the risk of him getting beaten was there. Garcia should have been moved up to face one of these fighters: Jezreel Corrales, Jhonny Gonzalez, Denis Shafikov, Francisco Vargas, Christopher Diaz, Lamont Roach Jr., Mikhail Alexeev or Robinson Castellanos.
”My power is going to be a big problem,” Garcia said about Morales. ”When I go to the body, it’s going to be a big problem. But you never know until you step into the ring. You can’t really tell how he fights until you are in there. Whatever he has said about me is irrelevant. Whether he thinks I’m a kid or that I’m always on social media. That’s irrelevant. What matters is what will happen in the ring. For this fight, you can expect big numbers. It will set new precedents. This Facebook deal was made for me,” Garcia said.
Morales isn’t afraid of Garcia’s power, because he’s been in with bigger punchers than him in his career. He laughs at Garcia’s tough talk of wanting to knock him out. It’s empty talk by Garcia, as far as Morales is concerned. Garcia is more of a boxer than a puncher. The sooner he realizes that the better it will be for him. It’s in Garcia’s best interest to box his way to a decision than trying to knock Morales out. If Garcia tries to slug, he’s going to leave himself open for a lot of counter shots from Morales and it could get messy for him. Morales is coming into Saturday’s fight with Garcia having won 16 of his last 17 fights. Earlier in Morales’ career, he fought to a draw in three consecutive fights against Oscar Diaz, Xavier Montelongo Jr. and Roque Ramos. None of those fighters stuck it out in the sport he way that Morales did. Morales would have likely beaten all three of those guys if he had fought them again after he started to improve.
”Ryan Garcia cannot knock me out,” Morales said. ”We’re going to make it a smart fight during every single second of every round. All of my fights have been against tough contenders, and that has given me a lot of confidence. I have faced a lot of top fighters.”
Morales is going a little overboard in patting himself on the back about the opposition he’s faced during his career. He’s only faced one notable opponent during his career in Alberto Machado, and he lost to him by a one-sided 10 round unanimous decision in 2017. The rest of the guys that Morales has faced have been poor journeyman level opposition or prospects that only fought briefly before walking away from boxing for lack of success. Morales has been well picked by Golden Boy Promotions in what is really little more than a glorified showcase fight for Garcia to make him look better than he is.
”I’ve known Ryan Garcia for a while,” Morales said. ”We used to train at the same gym and he has the same goofball personality that he’s always had. But this is business, and there will be no games when we step inside the ring.”
Prediction
Garcia will likely win this fight by a closer than expected 10 round unanimous decision. The scores will likely be lopsided, but the fight won’t be that way. Morales is going to give Garcia all he can handle. Morales has a puncher’s chance of winning this fight, but since he’s not a huge slugger, he’s not going to get a knockout in this fight. Garcia should do enough to win a decision. He’ll likely showboat like he always does and play to his many boxing fans that will be at ringside to see him fight.
Garcia needs a big win over Morales on Saturday night in their Facebook Watch fight at 9:00 p.m. ET at the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio, California. This isn’t a world class guy that Garcia is facing, so he should be able to get him out of there if he’s the real deal that his promoters at Golden Boy are making him out to be. The problem is Garcia might not be a fighter that is as good as the hype, but were probably not going to find that out on Saturday night due to the level of his opponent.
Garcia is rated #4 WBO and #9 WBA. The sanctioning bodies aren’t doing Garcia any favors by ranking him as high as they are, because they’re putting him in a situation where soon he’s going to be rated No.1. If Garcia is ordered to fight someone like champions Gervonta Davis or Masayuki Ito, it’s going to look bad in the eyes of the boxing public if he rejects those fights and continues to pad his record against guys that are beatable. Golden Boy should take the training wheels off Garcia and let him test himself against Tank Davis, Alberto Machado, Ito, Tevin Farmer or Miguel Berchelt. If nothing else, it would be a good learning experience for Garcia to measure himself against the other top fighters.