By Jeff Sorby: Ryan Garcia announced on Tuesday that the “official start” of his training camp has begun for his April comeback fight. Ryan isn’t saying who his opponent will be, but it’s expected to be a well-known fighter.
This will be Ryan’s first fight back since his win over Luke Campbell over a year ago in January 2021. Despite all the opportunities that the 23-year-old Garcia had to fight, he couldn’t get a second fight last year.
Will Ryan make it through training camp?
With Ryan’s recent track record of pulling out of fights in 2021, boxing fans need to take a wait-and-see approach to his April match. I mean, the chances are that Ryan won’t make it through training camp to get to his next fight without backing out of the fight due to injuries or simply him changing his mind about wanting to fight.
Unbeaten lightweight contender King Ry (21-0, 18 KOs) says his “return will be special,” which hopefully means he’s fighting a quality opponent.
However, Garcia WON’T be fighting IBF/WBA/WBC Franchise/WHO lightweight champion George Kambosos Jr., though. This week, the Australian fighter said that the only two guys he’s considering for his next fight are WBC 135-lb champion Devin Haney and Vasily Lomachenko.
Former IBF super featherweight champion Tevin Farmer mentioned several weeks ago that he was in talks with Ryan Garcia’s promoters for a fight.
Naturally, Farmer (30-5-1, 6 KOs) was pretty excited about it, but then he stopped talking about the fight. That suggests that Golden Boy changed their mind about wanting to match Ryan against the 31-year-old Farmer, who hasn’t fought in two years since his loss to Joseph ‘Jojo’ Diaz Jr.
Ryan is fighting for the first time since coming off right-hand surgery in November, so it’s unclear what percent of use he’ll have in that hand.
Official start to my fight camp! April the Return will be special 🥊👑
— RYAN GARCIA (@RyanGarcia) February 1, 2022
His right hand never has where he produced his power. In terms of his power, virtually all of Ryan’s knockouts come from his left hook, which is a formidable weapon.
Still, it won’t be a good thing for Ryan is his right hand is only 70% capacity. To compete with the likes of Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis, Kambosos, Haney, and Lomachenko, he needs his right hand at full strength.
Joseph ‘Jojo’ Diaz Jr. volunteered to fight Ryan Garcia, and he was the one that it was believed that Golden Boy.
Recently, there had been talk of the 23-year-old Ryan facing Isaac ‘Pitbull’ Cruz for his next fight in April. Still, his promoter Oscar De La Hoya, revealed dramatically on Twitter that the “lucrative” offer that had been made had been rejected.
It appeared to many boxing fans that De La Hoya was never serious in the first place about setting up a fight between Ryan Garcia and Pitbull Cruz.
“Ryan is good. He’s talented, strong, fast,” said Arnold Barboza to ESNEWS in giving his view of Ryan Garcia. “Kambosos, he’s hungry, he works hard. I think it’s a 50-50 fight; it’s a hard one to decide.
“You have to see how Ryan comes back.”
Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions will likely choose to match Ryan against a lesser fighter with little power in his first fight back from a year layoff.
Good options for Ryan’s comeback fight in April:
- Maxi Hughes
- Zaur Abdullaev
- Francesco Patera
- Ricky Burns
- Lee Selby
If George Kambosos Jr. weren’t a world champion and calling all the shots, he would be the ideal opponent for Ryan to fight next. Kambosos Jr. can’t punch and isn’t a knockout threat at all. He would be perfect for Ryan.
Yeah, Kambosos Jr. beat former four-belt lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez last November, but he did it by taking advantage of his stamina problems. Kambosos was fortunate that Teofimo could only fight hard for small portions of the fight due to injuries and stamina issues.
