By Ricardo Lezama 
Conventional wisdom tends to be the road to mediocrity and missing the obvious. Ryan Garcia has speed and power. In boxing, that’s the basketball equivalent of buzzer beating three pointers and high-altitude dunks.
Prior to Haney, Ryan Garcia had accepted the difficult task of combatting Gervonta Davis despite Garcia being weight drained, dehydrated and capped at the final weigh-in with difficult conditions for any veteran, let alone a promising but still developing boxing prospect. Timothy Bradley even staked his career as a commentator on the premise that Garcia would not be able to look competitive against Devin Haney:
Timothy Bradley: “If somehow Ryan Garcia pulls off the upset..oh my gosh..I might as well quit commentary and leave the game(of boxing) alone I’m not gonna lie because I just don’t see it happening”
— Danny (@dantheboxingman) April 21, 2024
😭😭😭#Boxing #HaneyGarcia
💀💀🥊🥊🥊pic.twitter.com/O9XyxhF3Ci
Nevertheless, the boxing world was aghast yesterday as the highly regarded boxing prodigy, Devin Haney, who showed heart and grit, was knocked down on 3 separate occasions. Haney’s game plan was frazzled by Ryan’s strength and speed early on, which set the tone and nearly got the WBC titlist knocked out in the 7th round. A quick recap below just to show you what wer’re talking about.
Ryan Round 1
The first round set the tone for much of the fight as Ryan stunned Devin Haney in the first minute of the fight. Haney was visibly wobbled, and maintained distance with several jabs. The momentum was clearly on Garcia’s side, and somehow, Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix (who tends to overvalue the semblance of technique) also saw it in favor of Garcia.
For the next 3 rounds, Haney jabbed but never quite connected with more than a left hook or right to the body on Garcia while Garcia for his part was able to connect with his left hook gradually more frequently with each successive round.
In the first knockdown at the 7th round, Garcia was connecting a lot with his signature left hook, but also the ability to throw a lot of punches even if blocked or missed in such a sequence that straight right hands and left hooks could presumably look blurry to Devin Haney.
Even with the limited spurts of volume from Garcia, those combinations were making Haney not wanting to compete directly or engage. His jab seemed to be ineffective and commentators, like Antonio Tarver, noted that Haney’s overall gameplan not present in the execution.
As round 11 approached, Garcia was able to knock down Haney, and Haney could even reach jabs too much which allowed Garcia to control the distance. That was evident in most of the rounds, which were difficult to ever really swing on Haney.
Devin Haney Makes Demands, Future?
After the fight, Haney did mention the possibility of reaching back for a rematch at the 140lb super lightweight WBC boxing. Another boxing legend, Adrien Broner, suggested that the appropriate fight for the division’s belt was actually Broner vs Haney.
Bernard Hopkins did mention something worrisome about Devin Haney. He speculates that the way Garcia handed Haney his loss was too much. The punishment was prolonged with Harvey Dock, perhaps, taking too many liberties with Haney’s ability to recover.