By Sean Jones: Lightweight contenders Ryan ‘Kingry’ Garcia (20-0, 17 KOs) and Luke Campbell (20-3, 16 K.O.) have reached an agreement in principle for a fight in the latter part of November on DAZN. The match will take place in the U.S. or the U.K., and the location will be determined this week.
The winner of the Garcia vs. Campbell match will hold the interim WBC 135-lb title and will be the next mandatory for champion Devin Haney.
Earlier today, the World Boxing Council had a purse bid for the Campbell vs. Ryan fight, but it’s been delayed for seven days, according to Mike Coppinger.
Hearn hoping for crowds by November
Campbell’s promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing told The Athletic this about the contest with King Ryan:
“Obviously we’d love to have crowds back through the door and we hope by middle-end of November this will be a reality. We are finalizing contracts.”
It’s highly unlikely that crowds will be back by November, considering the timing of the Campbell-Ryan fight will be right at the moment the second wave of the pandemic is supposed to hit. However, with the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson talking of potentially letting crowds return to sporting events by October, it would seem like the U.K. would be the best location to stage the Garcia fight with Luke.
The U.S. is going through a pure misery with the virus sweeping the south and creating massive problems in rural communities resistant to mask-wearing.
Hearn says that they’ll use this week to “wrap up all the details” for the Garcia vs. Campbell match so that it’s ready to go for November. Eddie said on Monday that he wants to stage the Campbell-Garcia fight at the O2 Arena in London, England.
Given that the purse bid was canceled for today, there’s no way that Hearn can force the 22-year-old Garcia to fight the 2012 Olympic gold medalist Campbell in the U.K.
Ryan isn’t fragile mentally, but he lacks the experience against world-class opposition to be traveling to a foreign country and taking on someone of 32-year-old Campbell’s level.
Is Ryan Garcia ready for Campbell?
The careful match-making that Golden Boy Promotions has done for their famous social media star Ryan Garcia could bite him on the backside when he gets inside the ring with the highly experienced Luke, as he’s a real fighter.
Golden Boy should have already taken the training wheels off of Ryan and let him take on his first world-level fighter by now, but unfortunately, they’ve been slow in moving him.
If the choice were up to Golden Boy, they likely would have continued to feed him fringe-level fighters, but the World Boxing Council forced their hand recently by ordering Garcia and Campbell to fight for the interim WBC lightweight belt.
Garcia has too much of an ego to turn down the Campbell fight, and he doesn’t appear to grasp the way that he’s been carefully matched by Golden Boy promoter Oscar De La Hoya.
Oscar and Golden Boy president Eric Gomez know what they’re doing, and they weren’t going to rush Ryan until they knew for a fact that he was ready to take on talented top tier opposition like Campbell.