Ryan Garcia (24-1, 20 KOs) scored a controversial eighth round knockout of Oscar Duarte (26-2-1, 21 KOs) on Saturday night night at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas. The time of the stoppage was at 2:51 of the eighth. Duarte beat the count, but the referee halted it anyway.
In the eighth, Ryan dropped the slow-looking Duarte, who made the mistake of waiting until the count of nine to get up. He appeared to get up in time, but the referee appeared to have his mind made up anyway, so he stopped it.
Ryan was running from the seventh round after getting hit with some hard body shots from Duarte.
The performance was a shaky one for Ryan, as he turned his back to Duarte the entire night to keep from getting hit, and the referee warned the Mexican fighter against taking advantage of the situation.
Ryan seemed dependent on an illegal stiff arm, where he held his left arm far out in front of him to keep the shorter fighter Duarte from getting close. The referee just let Ryan use that illegal tactic the entire fight.
The Live boxing results for tonight’s card on DAZN will be shown below.
– In the performance of the night, lightweight Floyd Schofield (17-0, 12 KOs) knocked Ricardo Torres (17-8-3, 12 KOs) down four consecutive times with left hooks to the head to get a first round knockout in the chief support bout.
The fight was stopped at 1:51 of round one. Torres looked defenseless to stop the lead left hooks that Schofield repeatedly hit him with. It would have been good to see Schofield in with a solid lightweight like Jamaine Ortiz, George Kambosos Jr., or Edwin De Los Santos to see how he deals with fighters with ability.
– Using his high work, middleweight Shane Mosley Jr. (21-4, 12 KOs) kept his career alive with a sixth round stoppage of Joshua Conley (17-6-1, 11 KOs).
Mosley Jr., the son of former multi-division world champion ‘Sugar’ Shane Mosley, kept the pressure on Conley, using his volume punching to wear down the 31-year-old.
After the sixth, Conley decided he’d had enough and chose not to come out for the seventh.
It wasn’t an easy fight for the 32-year-old Mosley Jr, as he took some big shots from Conley in each round. One in particular came in the fourth when Conley tagged Mosley Jr. with a right hand that was huge, but he took it well.
– The big-punching super middleweight Darius Fulghum (9-0, 9 KOs) did a number on journeyman Pachino “Chino” Hill (8-5-1, 6 KOs), battering him at will with hard punches to get a referee stopped in the second round. The time of the stoppage was at 0:56 of round two.
The popular social media star Ryan Garcia, with his 11 million Instagram followers, is in a must-win fight tonight against Oscar Duarte in their 143-lb catchweight fight at the Toyota Center in Houston, TX. Tonight’s event will be shown live on DAZN at 8:00 p.m. ET.
Ryan makes his first fight back side since suffering his career setback and cannot afford another defeat tonight if he moves forward towards becoming a world champion at 140.
Main Card (DAZN, 8:00 pm ET)
Ryan Garcia vs. Oscar Duarte
Floyd Schofield vs. Ricardo Lopez
Shane Mosley Jr vs. Joshua Conley
Darius Fulghum vs. Pachino Hill
According to Ryan’s promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, he needed the weight to be adjusted to 143 lbs, which he wasn’t too happy about. De La Hoya, a fighter known for being disciplined during his career, is concerned about Ryan’s dedication.
Things fell apart for the 25-year-old Ryan (23-1, 19 KOs) last April when he quit on one knee in the seventh round after being cut down by a left to the ribcage by Gervonta Davis.
Is Ryan Garcia too rich for his own good?
Ryan took home a reported $20 million for that fight, which obviously helped him cushion the blow of suffering his first career defeat. His net worth is estimated at $30M now, which, one could argue, is a problem getting in the way of his willingness to dedicate himself to the sport.
When a person is 25, like Ryan, and set for life financially, it’s got to be difficult to work hard like fighters who haven’t got it made and are hungry for success. Ryan has been filthy rich for quite some time, but his wealth has soared since his fight with Tank Davis.
It’s literally to the point where he’s got so much dough that it could be getting in the way of him putting in the work required to compete against top-tier fighters.
Duarte is a fringe-level fighter at #9 WBO at 140, but he’s still top-tier and more than capable of beating Ryan Garcia if he doesn’t have his head on straight tonight.
Ryan being positioned for a mega-PPV event in early 2024
“I’ll tell you one thing. I’ll be watching the following weekend when Devin Haney & [Regis] Prograis go at it, and the winner will possibly get a call from me where we can start negotiating a fight with Ryan if Ryan wins [against Duarte], and if things turn out okay with Devin Haney and Prograis,” said Oscar De La Hoya to Fighthype.
Fighting the Haney-Prograis winner is Ryan’s best bet for a big payday because none of the other champions at 140 have the popularity for him to face in a mega-fight. WBO champ Teofimo Lopez isn’t a ticket seller and is highly unpredictable in his behavior.
What could be a problem is if Ryan Garcia continues to have problems making the 140-lb limit, as we see here with his fight with Duarte.
If Golden Boy can’t count on Ryan getting down to the light welterweight limit for a title shot against the Haney vs. Prograis winner, they might as well scrap the whole idea and focus on trying to set up the rematch with Gervonta in another catchweight, non-title fight.
“If we have to deal with issues that we’re dealing with now, it’s no big deal because we’ve dealt with this before. There’s always an answer to everything,” said De La Hoya.
“When Ryan steps foot inside the ring with Duarte, I sure hope that he’s focused, will take care of business and the job at hand and then we move on to the big PPV fight,” said De La Hoya.
It’s not looking like Ryan is focused, given all the bickering he’d been doing this week with Bernard Hopkins & De La Hoya, complaining about his belief that they don’t believe in him.
“It’s not something that anybody can know is for real or not until he starts stepping up again, which could happen after this fight if he does beat Oscar Duarte, which is expected,” said Paulie Malignaggi to ProBox TV about Ryan Garcia.
“I don’t think they [Golden Boy] are trying to get Ryan beat or that he’s out the door. Promoters have a knack for when you’re on your way out the door to devalue you as best as possible so that you bring nothing to the table for anybody else for one of their rivals.
“I don’t think it’s fractured [Golden Boy’s working relationship with Ryan] because if it was, they would have maximized this fight much more than getting a Oscar Duarte, who isn’t a named guy and doesn’t have much of a chance of beating Ryan Garcia here,” said Malignaggi.
You just never know whether Ryan is serious or not, as he seems to admire Jake Paul quite a bit, and he’s someone who is known for going over the top in a WWE-type way to promote his fights.
The popular social media star Ryan Garcia, with his 11 million Instagram followers, is in a must-win fight tonight against Oscar Duarte in their 143-lb catchweight fight at the Toyota Center in Houston, TX. Tonight’s event will be shown live on DAZN at 8:00 p.m. ET.