By Sean Jones: Ryan Garcia says he’s working on a “bigger fight” than the Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis match, but he can’t reveal who it is. The speculation is ‘King’ Ryan (21-0, 18 KOs) is negotiating a fight against Manny Pacquiao.
It could be someone else that Ryan is negotiating a fight with now other than Manny, but he’s saying it’s a “bigger” match-up than with Tank. That leaves only one possibility and that’s Pacquiao.
It makes sense for Ryan to face Manny because he may not ever get another chance after 2021. Also, there’s a lot of money and fame for the 22-year-old King Ryan to gain from fighting Pacquiao ahead of a fight against Tank Davis.
Ryan Garcia putting Tank Davis on hold
The Filipino star Pacquiao (62-7-2, 39 KOs) is a fighter that Ryan named last week as one of two that he wants to face.
Pacquiao obviously heard about Ryan’s interest in fighting him, and he may have quickly moved forward to step in front of Tank Davi (24-0, 23 KOs) to take the match.
“I have a potentially huge, bigger fight than him, so I might pin him off to the side,” said Ryan Garcia to @JalenandJacoby about him facing someone else next rather than Tank Davis.
“I’m still going to fight him, but I wouldn’t not fight him unless it was a bigger opportunity, but I cannot say anything right now. So I’m going to just keep it at that,” said King Ryan.
Well, it looks like Tank Davis is going to need to sit and wait for his opportunity to fight the Golden Boy star, Ryan Garcia. Boxing fans are going to react negatively to the news of Ryan delaying the fight with Tank until they find out who his opponent will be.
If it’s not someone like Pacquiao, it’ll need to be a talented fighter like Vasily Lomachenko, Teofimo Lopez, or Shakur Stevenson.
What makes it likely that Ryan is facing one of those fighters is it wouldn’t be a “bigger fight” than if he were fighting Gervonta Davis, who is arguably more popular than those three.
Ready for the battle 🥊⚔️ pic.twitter.com/tTMVqIiMxN
— Ryan Garcia (@KingRyanG) January 19, 2021
Tank Davis is fighting on pay-per-view now, and Teofimo, Lomachenko, and Shakur haven’t gotten to that stage.
If you exclude Pacquiao, these are other big fights for Ryan Garcia:
- Errol Spence
- Floyd Mayweather Jr
- Josh Taylor
- Jose Ramirez
Spence is too big, and Mayweather is already scheduled to fight Logan Paul.. Neither of those guys would work as an opponent for King Ryan. Taylor and Ramirez aren’t as popular as Tank Davis, so Ryan would be taking a step backward if he were to fight either of them.
“Why call someone cocky for being confident in themselves, there are ways to express their confidence there is also ways to play mental warfare with your opponent, it’s all about intent,” said Ryan Garcia on Twitter.
The former eight-division world champion Pacquiao would be a huge step up in class for Ryan from the opposition he’s been facing at 135.
Although the 5’6″ Pacquiao is shorter than the 5’10” Ryan Garcia, he’s used to fighting bigger guys.
Even if it turns out badly for Ryan against Pacquiao, he’ll still gain invaluable experience and, of course, make a lot of money. It’s a win-win for Ryan Garcia any way you want to look at it. It also gives Ryan a chance to avenge his promoter Oscar De La Hoya’s loss to Pacquiao from 2008.
Ryan all he could handle in his last fight against Luke Campbell on January 2nd. He was lucky that the British fighter lacked the common sense to go after him after he put down in the second round because if that had been Pacquiao, he would have been in trouble.