By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya is starting to realize that few boxing fans are giving his fighter Ryan Garcia a chance against Luke Campbell. The WBC ordered those two fighters to battle with the winner to challenge World Boxing Council lightweight champion, Devin Haney.
As Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn says, Ryan facing Campbell could be a “terrible mistake” at this early stage in his career. De La Hoya is willing to gamble that Garcia can pass this test and show the critics how wrong they are.
Oscar is still negotiating the Garcia-Campbell fight, and he hasn’t given a date or a location fights the match. Ryan recently signed his portion of the contract for the war, and it was said that the match with Luke would be taking place in November “behind closed doors.”
De La Hoya is saying that Ryan (20-0, 17 KOs) will prove fans wrong again, but it’s unclear precisely when he was matched up against a talented foe to where fans were doubting him.
De La Hoya says Ryan Garcia will prove people wrong
Up until this point in ‘Kingry’ Ryan’s career, he’s been facing lower-level opposition. The two best fighters Ryan has fought thus far are Romero Duno and Francisco Fonseca, both of which are bottom fringe level fighters at 135.
WBC isn’t doing the 22-year-old Ryan a favor by ordering the contest with the far more experienced Campbell (20-3, 16 KOs). Luke has faced far superior competition during his seven-year professional career than Ryan in his four-year career.
Earlier this year, Ryan’s father/trainer Henry Garcia said that he wanted “Luke Campbell” and “Lee Selby” for his next fight.
Mark my words, @KingRyanG will again prove you wrong against @luke11campbell can’t wait for @GoldenBoyBoxing to promote this fight in LA
— Oscar De La Hoya (@OscarDeLaHoya) August 28, 2020
Selby is NOT in the same league Linares, and it seems that Henry isn’t a good judge of talent for him to be picking Selby and Campbell over Linares.
During an interview, Henry voiced concerns that Ryan wouldn’t receive credit if he fought 34-year-old Jorge Linares because of his age and the fact that he’s not considered to be in his prime any longer.
The thing of it is, Linares is just two years older than the 32-year-old Campbell, and he has a win over Luke from 2017. Henry either was unaware of Linares’ win over Campbell, or perhaps he thought it was ancient history.
It wasn’t that long ago for Henry to dismiss Linares’ win over Campbell as being ancient history. Linares did a better job against Vasiliy Lomachenko than Campbell did, even though he stopped him in the 10th round in May 2018. He knocked Lomachenko down in the sixth round of that fight and gave him a lot of trouble.
Ryan facing his first real test
Some boxing fans think it’s too early for Ryan Garcia to be taking on the 2012 Olympic gold medalist Campbell. Although Ryan has shown tremendous power and hand speed, he doesn’t have the same offensive tools that De La Hoya possessed when he turned pro at a similar age after capturing an Olympic gold medal in 1992.
De La Hoya already had all the physical tools when he turned pro, and he was fighting in the lightweight where he had a considerable height advantage over his opposition. So when the 5’10 1/2″ De La Hoya did begin stepping it up at age 22 in his second year as a professional in 1995, he was able to roll over the following talented fighters:
- John John Molina
- Rafael Ruelas
- Jesse James Leija
- Genaro Hernandez
Those guys much more talented than Luke Campbell, and De La Hoya made it look easy beating them. Where De La Hoya was in 1995 was far ahead of the point that Ryan is at right now. That’s why boxing fans have doubts about Ryan.
They don’t see him as having the experience or the talent to smash a guy like Campbell. If Ryan were another De La Hoya, it would be no problem for him to beat Campbell. That would be easy, but he’s not another Oscar. Ryan is a fighter with an outstanding left hook and not much else.
Campbell has a lot of ways he can beat Ryan, and it’s going to be difficult for hm to compete. There are so many different things Campbell can do that Ryan has never seen before as a pro, and he flounder.