Ryan Garcia’s fierce feud with Devin Haney goes back over a decade
Super-lightweight title hopeful Ryan Garcia challenges for world honours for the first time in his career when he takes on Devin Haney next weekend for the WBC 140lbs title and there has been plenty of back-and-forth during the build-up.
Now, ‘King Ry’ has explained where their long-term rivalry originally stems from.
Both men aged 25, Haney and Garcia have had plenty of history dating back to their time in the amateurs, with Garcia being a 15-time national amateur champion and amassing an astonishing 215-15 record.
However, it is Haney who has had more success as a professional, as a two-division world champion and the youngest ever four-belt undisputed champion, before moving up to super-lightweight.
In an interview with DAZN, Garcia explained one of many instances when he and Haney crossed paths in the early days of their respective careers.
“We were at the Junior Olympic Nationals, we were about 15/14 and I went at him right away. I had him hurt, wobbling in the middle of the ring, everybody was going crazy. His own coach, or one of the people in his corner, came up to my Dad after the fight and he goes, ‘Devin thinks that you broke his eardrum’, he was in the corner saying he couldn’t hear at all and that he wanted to stop the fight.
“That was just one example of what I’ve done to him and he never gave me an eight-count. He literally cut the video that he was showing, he actually got a point taken away during that fight, for hitting me on the back of the head.
“He hit me in the back of the head, got a point taken away and still won, that means that he would have had to have killed me in all of the other rounds. They probably robbed me in that fight, but it’s all good, I don’t even care.”
Haney-Garcia takes place on April 20th and can be watched live on DAZN PPV.