Promoter Leonard Ellerbe is concerned with Ryan Garcia enough to want to pull him from his April 20th fight against Devin Haney due to the things he’s read about the popular fighter. But will it happen? Of course not.
Ryan (24-1, 20 KOs) is NOT going to be pulled because his headliner against WBC light welterweight champion Haney (31-0, 15 KOs) on DAZN PPV at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, has too much money on the line.
For better or worse, the fight will go ahead, and if Ryan, 26, is easily beaten one-sided by Haney, there will be much second-guessing about why the promoters, family, and DAZN allowed this travesty to go ahead.
Ticket Sales are Flopping – Who’s to Blame?
On a side note, Tickets are reportedly not selling for the Haney-Garcia fight at the 19,000-seat Barclays Center, and some believe the combination of sky-high seat prices, Ryan’s unbalanced, erratic behavior, and the lack of a strong promotion has hurt fans’ interest.
For starters, neither of these fighters are from the East Coast, so it was an unusual location to stage the fight. To sell a fight in New York usually requires a fighter to come from that state or nearby in New Jersey. Ryan is from Southern California, whereas Haney grew up in Las Vegas after being born in San Franciso.
Ellerbe is Worried, and He Should Be
“If he were my fighter, I’d pull him. Yeah, everything you’re reading is kind of what it is,” said promoter Leonard Ellerbe to Fight Hub TV about Ryan Garcia, who has acted erratically during the promotion of his April 20th fight against Devin Haney.
“It’s a good fight for both of them at this point in their careers. Neither one,” said Ellerbe when asked who he would favor between Haney and Garcia. “You got to focus because a big part of the preparation isn’t just the physical part. It’s the mental preparation.
“To fight at an elite level, it’s hard to do everything, and I know firsthand that when you’re fighting at the highest level, you’ve got to have a tremendous amount of focus,” Ellerbe said about Ryan Garcia.
“It’s always hard when you’re a younger fighter, and you haven’t been in a lot of big-time fights to be able to. You got to sit still. It could be that he’s [Ryan] promoting the fight. I don’t know what he’s doing.”
