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By Robert Segal: Ryan Garcia insists that he’s 100% focused on Javier Fortuna for their 12-round headliner this Saturday, July 16th.

Fans believe the 23-year-old Ryan’s mind is elsewhere, dreaming about a huge pay-per-view fight against Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis and talking endlessly about that match-up in every interview.

The money might be the reason Ryan Garcia (22-0, 18 KOs) is so amped up about fighting Tank Davis immediately, despite him lacking experience against top-level guys.

If Ryan’s career goes to pieces after his gimme fight against the 33-year-old Fortuna (37-3-1, 26 KOs) this Saturday, he’d at least have gotten a big payday against Tank Davis.

Up to this point, the only name fighter Ryan has faced is Luke Campbell, and he’d already been softened up ahead of time by Vasyl Lomachenko and Jorge Linares.

Ryan Garcia looking beyond Fortuna fight

“I know that I’m fighting Fortuna. It’s no secret, but I also know that Gervonta is up next,” said Ryan Garcia to DAZN. “I’ll talk about it, but it’s not like I’m losing focus on Fortuna. People can’t separate their mind thing. They can’t multitask. I just know that when I’m talking about Tank for a future fight. When I’m talking about Fortuna, it’s about a present fight. I know how to separate the two.

“I was looking at the fight where Tank, for some reason, when he’s up against guys that he’s supposed to be, he gets tagged up a lot,” Garcia said.

“If you have mental health problems and then you pull out of a fight with Javier Fortuna, I believe it was, and then in the next second, I see you at the Logan Paul – Mayweather press conference in the Paul entourage just clowning around, I don’t know, bro,” said Paulie Malignaggi to ProBox TV about his belief that Ryan Garcia lacks the desire to be the best.

“I don’t know what mental problems you are there because you’re obviously out in the open; you’re clowning around, having fun, which is fine. You’re not taking a break from anything. You just didn’t fight [Fortuna].

“When I saw that, ‘I’m like, does this kid [Ryan Garcia] want to fight or does he just like this life? It’s fine. If you like this life, it’s fine. You’ve earned it and obviously have been able to do it through your social media platform and all this modeling stuff.

“He’s very profitable; he’s a very, very promotable kid. I guess you can take it a little bit as a criticism, but it’s also because I see a lot of potential in Ryan Garcia. I think it’ll be a waste if he doesn’t at least give himself a chance to live up to it.

“Canelo, you criticize him for the Matthew Hatton fight, but Canelo ended up fighting everyone at a certain point. He fought them all,” said Malignaggi.

Is Ryan committed to boxing?

“I’m not a racist guy, but I’ve got to speak to my point of view. When I’m coming up, people I know in boxing have problems trying to figure out where the next meal is coming from, where are the lights going to be paid at, where are the water going to be paid at,” said Roy Jones Jr.

“We don’t have time to be talking about no depression. We’re talking about life, do you understand me? We’re doing this because this is our way out of all the stuff that is stopping us from making it.

“These are the reasons we don’t make it. These are the reasons why our uncles and our older friends are in prison because they have to try and find something to do to survive this. Not because they’re having some kind of mental issues, as you say.

“It’s mental issues where you show up at another fight, and you all have. No, bro. That’s not boxing,” said Jones Jr about Ryan Garcia.

“So for me, you got to show me something different because if you’re not committed to boxing because we don’t have college degrees. We don’t have time for that. Most of us didn’t have parents that could afford that.

“We got it from the mud. We don’t have time to talk about no mental issues and showing up a couple of days later at a big fight. Nah. If we’re sick, we’re sick. We ain’t going nowhere, but we don’t have time for that because if we’re sick, we’re dying. We don’t have nobody to come to save us,” said Jones Jr.

“If you’re not making money and you can’t pay the bills, you’re going to have a lot more issues,” said Malignaggi. “You’re going to get more depressed.”

“That’s what I know, so I don’t know what kind of depression that he’s [Ryan Garcia] talking about,” said Jones. “That don’t exist in the boxing school that I come from.”

“It’s a different generation, Roy,” said Malignaggi. “Again, we’re not psychiatrists. So nobody should take what Roy said and get offended for it because it’s really not an offensive thing. It’s more about you coming from a different perspective, a different point of view.

“You have to be willing to understand that point of view. Ryan, if he has those mental issues, the lights are still getting paid because he’s getting paid so much money for all his endorsements anyway.

“But if you can’t pay the bill, if you can’t pay the rent, and you can’t fill your fridge without these fights, you’re probably going to have more mental health issues and depression in the dark because you’re not paying your light bill.

“So then you figure out a way to win, then you’re not depressed because you win, and when you win, you’re in a good mood, and you get addicted to winning.

“When you have so much [money] coming in from so many different places like Ryan has earned, let’s get it right. He has earned all these acclaims outside of the ring. It’s a lot easier for him to say, ‘Let me step aside.’

“But for me, I saw him [Ryan Garcia] at the Logan Paul-Mayweather press conference right after; that’s when I started questioning a lot of things,” said Malignaggi.

The tools are there

“By the way, that was the bad side. The good side is he has all the necessary tools to become one of the best fighters in the division,” said Roy Jones Jr about Ryan Garcia. “That’s what hurts the most.”

“That’s why the criticism comes because we see all the tools there,” said Malignaggi about Ryan. “I see everything there. When I saw the Luke Campbell fight, I saw everything there.

“That’s what I needed to see. That was the one thing that I needed to see against a very good fighter [Campbell]. I still think Luke Campbell is a better fighter than anybody Devin Haney or Gervonta Davis has beaten. I still think that.

“I don’t think there’s a guy on the record of Gervonta Davis or Devin Haney that they’ve beaten that is better than Luke Campbell because you can’t judge Luke Campbell by the world titles he’s won because his two title shots came against a prime Linares and a prime Lomachenko.

“So Luke Campbell, with an Olympic gold medal, that was a really difficult opponent. You could see it in the fight. [Ryan] Garcia was in trouble.

“When I saw him come through that and the way he came through that, I said, ‘I’ve seen everything I need to see. I believe in this young man.’ Everything that happened afterward made that belief kind of fizzle.

“The criticism we have here is we see it all there. Man, you have everything there, bro. We can’t want it for you, though. You’ve got to want it yourself. You’ve got everything there, but we just want to see you want it because it’s there.

“You see it there, and we see it there. We don’t know if you see it there because you’re not believing in yourself enough. Your actions are speaking louder than your words. Let’s see what happens,” said Malignaggi about Ryan Garcia.