By Dan Ambrose: Super featherweight contender Ryan ‘Kingry’ Garcia (16-0, 13 KOs) has joined forces with Eddy Reynoso, the trainer for WBA/WBC middleweight champion Saul Canelo Alvarez. Garcia, 20, hopes to improve his career with the help of Reynoso.
Garcia’s lead trainer will now be Reynoso. The trainer’s pride and glory is Canelo Alvarez, but he’s failed to work his magic on other fighters not named Canelo. Reynoso is a good trainer, but he might not be good enough to work the magic on Garcia that he needs. But if Reynoso can improve him a slight bit, he might be able to win title one of the days, but probably not against a major talent like Miguel Berchelt.
If Garcia can get the kind of judging that Canelo has had in his major fights against Gennady Golovkin, Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara, he should do well with Reynoso as his trainer. It’s going to be difficult
Reynoso has his work cut out for him in improving the talent of the 20-year-old Garcia enough for him to take his game to the next level one day. Garcia is currently ranked #4 WBA, #4 WBO & #12 WBC at super featherweight. Although Garcia has been calling out Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis lately, his performances in beating Carlos Morales and Jayson Velez suggests that it would be a really bad idea for him to face him. Gervonta, 23, isn’t much older than Garcia, but he’s clearly a far better fighter at this point. Garcia will need to make major improvements in his game for him to get to the level where Davis is at right now.
Garcia has made a name for himself by his Twitter and Instagram posts more so that what he’s done inside the ring. He has a lot of followers on social media, many of which are girls. So, Garcia is famous for being a social media character, but not so much for what he’s done inside the boxing fans. Garcia hasn’t beaten anyone good yet for him to make news about his career.
It took Reynoso years to turn Canelo into a good fighter, and he still hasn’t shown that he can beat the best at 154 and 160. Let’s face it; Canelo lost to Gennady Golovkin, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Erislandy Lara. His fight with Austin Trout was seen as a draw in the eyes of the boxing public. Reynoso is a good trainer, but you give him credit for how the judges scored Canelo’s fights against Lara, Golovkin and Trout. That was the judges that saved Canelo from losing, not Reynoso. Canelo is a good fighter, but a lot of what’s helped him is match-making against the right guys at the right time in their careers. The judging has helped Canelo in the eyes of the fans.
““We are going to start right away, tomorrow is our first day, we had two meetings previously,” Reynoso said via Fight News. “To me, Ryan is a very dedicated fighter, very joyful. He wants to learn so we are here to help him. I followed him all of his career and I know how he is. We’re going to work on his defense, his counter-punching, and many more things to make him a better fighter. He has natural talent so it’s just a matter of working hard,” Reynoso said.
Reynoso already has good defensive skills. what’s hurt him is he stands straight up like a stork, he’s not super fast, slow hand speed, and not overly tough. If you look at the best fighters at super featherweight like Miguel Berchelt, Tank Davis, Tevin Farmer, Alberto Machado, Miguel ‘Mickey’ Roman, Francisco Vargas, Abner Mares and Christopher Diaz, Garcia would have problems with all of those guys.
If Garcia is serious about wanting to improve, he needs to training with Reynoso and Chepo year round, and not take breaks. It’s still unclear whether Garcia has the innate talent to take his career to the next level where he’ll be competitive against guys like Berchelt, Machado, Roman, Davis, Diaz, Farmer, Mares and Vargas. If Takashi Miura was still fighting, he would be a major problem for Garcia as well.
“I’m ready to get better,” Garcia said to espn.com. “I want to be the best so I am ready to do anything. I’m up for it, and I definitely will be paying attention to everything and listening to everything he says.”
Reynoso is going to need to take Garcia down to the basics, and rebuild him from there for him to potentially go somewhere in the sport. Garcia needs experience against good fighters, but he has to work his stamina in a big way.
Garcia isn’t going to stay at super featherweight for long. Once Reynoso starts training Garcia, he’ll likely start putting on weight the way Canelo has. Garcia’s last fight was at lightweight. If he’s going to be competing at lightweight, he’s going to need to exist with guys like Vasyl Lomachenko, Mikey Garcia, Robert Easter Jr., Luke Campbell, Jose Pedraza and Jorge Linares. Those guys so far ahead of where Garcia is now that it’s not even funny. Those guys were always good, so you can’t say whether Garcia will be able to get to their level with the help of Reynoso.
Ryan has been trained by his dad and most recently Danny Luna. Having Reynoso as his trainer will give Garcia a big upgrade, but that still doesn’t mean that he’s going to be able to take his career to the next level. In Garcia’s last two fights against Velez and Morales, he’s lacked the toughness that you normally see with the talented fighters at the elite level. Without the toughness, Garcia will just be a social media guy, who is ranked highly by the sanctioning bodies without having proven himself.
Garcia’s recent 10 round majority decision victory over Carlos Morales on September 1 was a close win, showing a lot of flaws in his game. Garcia’s stamina was a major problem for him, as he gassed out in the second half of the contest and spent most of the rounds holding to keep Morales from unloading on him. To say that Garcia was exposed in that fight by Morales is putting it lightly. Garcia was hurt in the later rounds, and might have been in danger of being knocked out if he didn’t do so much holding. The referee Thomas Taylor was patient with Garcia, choosing not to take off points for his nonstop holding. You can argue that Garcia should have lost a couple of points for his consistent holding of Morales. Garcia was gaming the system with his holding. A certain amount of holding is allowed in boxing, but Garcia was using his holding to survive and that should have led to him being penalized.
The first move for Garcia will be to work with Reynoso in Canelo Alvarez’s training camp. Canelo, 28, is getting ready for his December 15 title shot against WBA ‘regular’ super middleweight champion Rocky Fielding on DAZN at Madison Square Garden in New York. Garcia is expected to be added to the Canelo-Fielding card against an opponent still to be determined on the undercard. If Garcia’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions have their head screwed on straight, they won’t make the same mistake they did in his last fight by putting him in against someone with talent. Garcia clearly isn’t ready to face good fighters at 130 or 135 at this time. It would be a bad idea for Golden Boy to schedule a fight between Garcia and someone like Francisco Vargas, Jhonny Gonzalez or Abner Mares. Those guys are all former world champions who are now contenders due to them having aged and slipped a notch. They’re obviously not old enough for them to be put in with Garcia without beating him.
What sold Garcia on having Reynoso train him was the improvements he made in the game of Canelo Alvarez in his rematch with Gennady Golovkin, who he beat by a controversial decision last September in Las Vegas, Nevada. Even though the fight was seen as gift decision by the Nevada judges, Garcia was still impressed with the improvements Canelo made in the fight. Garcia notes that Canelo is a counter-puncher like himself, a factor that makes him a good fit as his trainer. There’s still a lot of questions whether Garcia will be able to be improved enough by Reynoso for him to beat the top fighters at super featherweight and lightweight. Reynoso has trained a lot of fighters, but only Canelo has been able to take his career to the next level.