By: Sean Crose
Say this much for Ryan Garcia – he knows how to draw attention. Now that he’s planning to return to the thing after an extended hiatus, he’s saying what he needs to in order to raise eyebrows. “I do like that fight,” he says to ESNEWS when asked about the prospect of facing new lightweight titlist George Kambosos. Although there are numerous big matches out there for the Australian fighter, Garcia indicates to ESNEWS that he brings in the most dollars and eyeballs.
“I would sell better than every single one of these guys,” he says on the video. That may be true, but Garcia’s take on how a fight with Kambosos would go down is nothing short of bold. “I win that fight,” says Garcia. “I knock him out within probably like seven rounds.” Considering that Kambosos became a titlist by outboxing the hard hitting Teofimo Lopez, who had himself won his WBA, IBF, and WBO belts from none other than Vasyl Lomachenko, that’s quite a claim. Still, Garcia has up until this point been able to live up to his hype.
Garcia’s last bout was in January of last year. It was memorable due to the fact that the undefeated Garcia not only beat, but stopped, the well regarded Luke Campbell in seven. It could from then on never be said that Garcia hadn’t fought anyone of note. Now, a year later and apparently in good spirits (Garcia has made it clear he needed to take a mental health break), the fighter is letting it be known he wants a crack at Kambosos’ titles.
“Hopefully, he wants it,” Garcia says of a Kambosos matchup.
Kambosos, however, may have other fish he wants to fry – including one Devin Haney, the highly skilled WBC lightweight titlist. Ironically enough, Kambosos, until very recently, was almost viewed as an afterthought. Defending titlist Lopez was seen as as being on his way to “bigger” things when they met in late November. By employing an excellent strategy, however, Kambosos derailed the Lopez express, thus finding himself the target of ambitious fighters on the rise.