Ryan Garcia's behavior was outrageous before, during and after his fight at Brooklyn's Barclays Center on April 20 with Devin Haney. He's great at playing the victim, and he was at it again the other day after the New York State Athletic Commission ordered him to pay $1.1 million of his purse for the Haney fight to Golden Boy Promotions, fined him $10,000 and suspended him for a year.
Garcia said after the news came out that he retired.
Good.
Let's hope he stays retired and doesn't darken a boxing ring again. He went on social media and urged UFC CEO Dana White to allow him to fight in the UFC, though the UFC is required to honor suspensions handed down by state athletic commissions. Thankfully, the UFC has a serious anti-doping program and not the ridiculous part-time plan that exists in boxing which is so full of holes that one doesn't need to be as shrewd as Lance Armstrong was to take advantage of them.
Garcia won't be fighting in any sanctioned combat sport in the U.S. for the next year. He's suspended and says he's retired. That's the best news we could have gotten in light of his outlandish behavior.
Boxing doesn't need his ilk in the sport. He's a talented fighter and, when he's mentally fit, a charismatic young man.
He's also a proven cheater, in multiple ways. Not only did he test positive for the performance enhancing drug, Ostarine, prior to his fight with Haney, but he intentionally missed weight.
Garcia's avid supporters, who clearly don't understand combat sports and the rigors of cutting weight and making the contracted figure, want to slough off the fact he missed weight by three pounds. Any fighter will tell you how difficult those final few pounds are to get off, and how much it hurts in the process. It depletes the body, but Haney was a professional and kept working. He made 140.
Garcia simply laughed it off and by his own admission, didn't try to come in at 140 pounds. He intentionally came in three pounds over the limit, which provided him with a massive advantage. He paid Haney $600,000 for coming in 3.2 pounds over, using his wealth to buy an advantage. Haney, of course, never should have agreed to this, but in the pre-fight bravado he did.
Not every fighter is wealthy enough to buy his way out of cutting weight. Taking performance-enhancing substances and intentionally missing weight in a sport like boxing could have deadly consequences. It's one thing for a baseball player to hit home runs 500 feet while juiced up. It's another thing entirely when they're artificially strengthened and engaging in hand-to-hand combat with another person.
The commission acted reasonably, and forcing Garcia to sit out a year while require him to miss at least one fight, if not two. That will cost him, at minimum, another several million tacked onto the fine he's already paid. He made $30 million for his 2023 fight with Gervonta Davis, so the number could have soared much higher.
It should come as no surprise, given his recent behavior, that Garcia has yet to take responsibility. His team released a statement in which it stood by Garcia's stance that he never took a banned substance. He said his supplements were contaminated, and said he took NutraBio supplements. However, NutraBio forcefully pushed back on Garcia's claim.
In a June 14 news release, NutraBio CEO Mark Glazier said, "NutraBio categorically rejects the reckless claims made by professional boxer Ryan Garcia and his team that the NutraBio SuperCarb product caused Mr. Garcia's positive test for Ostarine. Our company has consistently maintained a rigorous quality control process. NutraBio has never manufactured a supplement with Ostarine and has never brought Ostarine into our manufacturing facility for use in any product, ever. ..."
Glazier went on to note that NutraBio had the lot Garcia used tested and the results showed no Ostarine.
Garcia, of course, has played the victims and many of the clapping seals disguised as his fans have eaten it up. They've praised him for "outing" child predators and for being open in his faith.
That overlooks the fact that at the very least, giving him every benefit of every doubt, that he intentionally cheated when he didn't make weight. Garcia knows how difficult it is to make weight, and he knows the advantage of stopping early.
It overlooks the fact of all the feuds he's started. He got into it with former super middleweight champion Caleb Plant during the Gervonta Davis-Frank "The Ghost" Martin fight in Las Vegas last week. Garcia said on social media in an obvious and unbelievably cruel and crude attempt to upset Plant that he had sex with Plant's wife, Jordan. Are those the actions and the words of a man who, whenever it benefits him, says he loves Jesus?
Now, are we so naive to believe that all of this is a coincidence and he was just unlucky that he got the few supplement tablets that had been contaminated by someone else without his knowledge?
Please.
Thankfully, the New York State Athletic Commission has put a temporary end to Garcia's reign of error.
Hopefully, he uses the time not to paint himself as a victim and hurl accusations at others but to get help for his mental health issues. Helping himself in that regard would also help many others, since mental health issues are badly misunderstood by many.
Nothing can ever right the wrongs of what he did to Haney, but New York did what it could to warn others not to play that same game.