By Dan Ambrose: Ryan ‘Kingry’ Garcia says he’d like to fight former three-division world champion Vasily Lomachenko, but ultimately, he believes’ be too big and strong for the two-Olympic gold medalist.
King Ryan (21-0, 18 KOs) needs an opponent for his next fight still, as he’s chosen to pass up a title shot against WBC lightweight champion Devin Haney, and says he’s not interested in facing Javier Fortuna.
Lomachenko (14-2, 10 KOs) lost his last fight to Teofimo Lopez by a 12 round unanimous decision last October. It was a fight that Lomachenko controlled in the last six rounds, but it wasn’t enough for him to come all the way back.
Many boxing fans had Teofimo winning a narrow decision, but the judging crew gave him a lopsided win.
Ryan Garcia thinks Lomachenko would have won if he’d bitten down on his mouthpiece and fought hard in the first six rounds instead of giving them away by not throwing punches.
Lomachenko would be an excellent scalp for the 22-year-old Ryan to add to his collection if he could work up the nerve to fight him.
Unfortunately, Ryan says he only wants to fight Manny Pacquiao or Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis next, and if he doesn’t change his mind, he’ll be sitting a long time.
Recently, Haney (25-0, 15 KOs) was trying to get a fight against Lomachenko, but he supposedly has turned down a seven-figure offer to fight him. Haney is now planning on facing Jorge Linares next.
“Yeah,” said Ryan to ESNEWS when asked if he’d be interested in fighting Lomachenko. “I think I’m a little too big and too strong [for Loma].
“If he comes with his A-game, I think it would be a hell of a fight, bombs would be thrown,” said Ryan about Lomachenko.
The oddsmakers would likely make Lomachenko a wide favorite against the inexperienced Ryan, mostly because of how flawed he looked in his last fight against Luke Campbell.
King Ryan was knocked down by Campbell in the second round, and he was getting hit a lot with left hands from the British lightweight. Campbell literally couldn’t miss with anything he threw.
Just imagine if that had Lomachenko in there with Ryan, it would likely have been over by the third round.
“Lomachenko is still a great fighter still, I don’t know why people are so quick to write him off. Muhammad Ali lost.
“I’m tired of this generation that thinks that if you lose one, you can’t come back and win it. Look at Lennox Lewis. Hasim Rahman knocked him out cold. Imagine if it was nowadays, they wouldn’t have given him the rematch.
“He [Lomachenko] started off slow, and he won the second half of the fight but Teofimo picked up the final round,” said Ryan Garcia about Lomachenko’s loss to Teofimo Lopez last October. “He can’t say that he won, he just lost because he didn’t seize the moment.
“All you had to do is bite down on your mouthguard. If he caught you, he caught you, but if he didn’t, you broke through that, then you would have won easily because you would have broke him down. But he didn’t take the chance, he lost,” said King Ryan.
