What applies to one must apply to the other, without exceptions or selective standards. Garcia shared the ring tonight with an opponent who deserves to be judged by the very same criteria used to evaluate Ryan from the outset. Anything less would be intellectual dishonesty.
What we are attempting to do is evaluate, from a strictly boxing standpoint, Ryan Garcia’s true qualities under the scrutiny of fans and the media. This assessment is grounded in a simple premise: Garcia entered as the betting favorite and the presumed winner, based on expert opinion and the perceived limitations of his opponent’s skill set.
Another benchmark frequently used to project a fighter’s chances against an opponent is the presence of a common opponent, especially when that shared name carries real weight in boxing, such as Gervonta Davis. The performances of both fighters against that opponent often heavily shape expert and fan opinion. Garcia was stopped in seven rounds by Davis, while Mario Barrios lasted until the eleventh round in a scheduled twelve-round bout. Does that truly provide a fair measure?
It is both sad and revealing to revisit what happened to a fighter like Canelo Álvarez when he faced Terence Crawford, the moment reality finally caught up. For months, an entire media machine insisted that Canelo, a natural 160-pounder and, in the eyes of many, technically superior and nearly untouchable within his division, was supposed to defeat a welterweight. So, where were the ‘styles’ that supposedly make fights? Or did we simply witness a boxer protected by the same shadow that has followed Garcia, exposing the entire narrative for what it truly was: a fantasy sold to inflate numbers and drive pay-per-view sales.
We’ve already seen the Garcia vs. Barrios fight, and the question that lingers is simple: why did Garcia, who dropped Barrios at his absolute best in the opening round, fail to finish the job before the twelfth? There may be countless explanations, and I don’t doubt that many will offer them. But in this era, boxing has ceased to be what it once was, largely because for too long the fighter who was willing to give everything for a title was ultimately rewarded with something else: money.
I’ve watched boxing for decades. Perhaps I should be grateful to have witnessed it. In the 1980s and 1990s, very few of the figures we now idolize as modern stars would have been able to do anything meaningful against fighters who, even then, were not considered defining forces of their time.
It’s difficult to imagine Nápoles, Leonard, or Hearns allowing an opponent to hit the canvas in the first round and not aggressively pursue the stoppage within the next three. Arguello, and more recently Román González, Bivol, Beterbiev, or even Canelo himself would have likely ended that fight long before the final bell ever sounded.
We need to come to terms with the reality that this ‘sport’ has gradually stopped being one. It has evolved into a blunt entertainment product, something far closer to a spectacle than competition, one where the sanctioning approval of organizations like the WBC and WBA works in tandem to preserve the illusion that what we once loved about boxing still exists in its original form.
In the boxing industry, everything now revolves around a single element: money. Events are designed to offer you half the product, wrapped in the hollow promise that what you’re watching is something unique, something you can’t find anywhere else. The truth is simple. What’s difficult is pretending not to see it
At some point, we have to stop pretending. What we call boxing today is no longer driven by urgency, risk, or the will to finish. It is driven by economics. The fight between Garcia and Barrios didn’t expose a lack of talent; it exposed a lack of necessity. In another era, the question wouldn’t be why the fight went the distance, but why it was ever allowed to.
Boxing didn’t quietly evolve. It was repackaged. Wrapped in sanctioning belts, protected by narratives, and sold as something irreplaceable. The business thrives on the illusion that what you’re watching is rare, essential, historic. It isn’t. The truth is uncomfortable, but unavoidable: this is no longer a sport built to crown the best. It’s an entertainment product designed to maximize revenue, and the hardest part isn’t understanding it. It’s accepting that we’re still being asked to believe otherwise
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