Ryan Garcia has already named his next opponent, saying he wants WBA light welterweight champion Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero next after his victory against Oscar Duarte (26-2-1, 21 KOs) at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas.
The heavy-handed Duarte appears to have scared Ryan (24-1, 20 KOs) off from taking on the talented 140-lb champions Subriel Matias, Teofimo Lopez, or Regis Prograis after hurting him to the body in the sixth round of their headliner on DAZN.
If Ryan, 25, was hoping for fan applause when he called out Rolly inside the ring at the Toyota Center moments after his eighth round stoppage win over Duarte, he had to have been disappointed because there was only a quiet murmur from the audience, as if they collectively were saying, ‘What is this guy thinking? Rolly? Please, no. Not that loss.’
Ryan looked scared inside the ring tonight after he started getting hit clean to the body by Duarte in the fifth round. Once he started feeling Duarte’s power, he put on his track spikes and went into sprinter mode, running around, holding and oddly turning his back to him in a weird move.
“This was scary. His punch was hard,” said Ryan Garcia at the post-fight press conference, talking about the power of Oscar Duarte, which was reflected in the movement that he was using from the sixth round.
“I don’t ever complain. That dude hit me so hard to the back of the head. It doesn’t look hard but it was hard. I was actually more worried in this fight than I was against Tank. With Tank, it was like a boxing match and moving around. But with this fight, I was like, ‘Oh, s***. He’s going to knock my a** out.’ He had the power to knock me out.”
Duarte’s power made Ryan look like he’d seen a ghost because he was running as his life depended on it. The only reason Ryan wound up stopping Duarte, besides the fact that the referee halted it on the count of nine rather than ten, is because the Mexican fighter wasn’t letting his hands go when he would catch up to Kingry against the ropes. Duarte was waiting too long, and that eventually cost him in the eighth round.
“What can I say? He [Shakur Stevenson] broke the record for the least punches landed, said Ryan when told that Shakur criticized his performance tonight against Duarte. “That’s actually a hard thing to do. The fact that he did that was crazy.”
Ryan’s inability to handle criticism got the better of him, because he wrecked a good portion of the post-fight press conference reacting to being rightfully criticized by Shakur, who was basically telling it like it was by pointing out that Ryan was flat-out awful the entire fight.
What did Ryan expect Shakur to say after his horrible performance? He wasn’t going to lie to spare his feelings, especially all the criticism he’d helped on him after his timid performance against Edwin De Los Santos on November 16th.
“At home, they [fans] turned that s*** off after the first or fourth rounds. That’s the difference. I fought a guy with power, but I didn’t back down,” Ryan said, failing to mention that he was running, holding & straight-arming Duarte the entire fight.
“I went right to him. I stood my ground, I did it all,” said Ryan, sounding like he was talking about a different fight than the one fans saw tonight against Duarte because he was not standing his ground often. He was moving, holding, and turning his back to Duarte.
“He [Shakur] only showed one thing. Moving around. His hand wasn’t hurt. His coach was telling him to throw it. Stop that narrative right now. He’s just been a hater since the amateurs, and I want to fight him. I will beat his a**. I promise you that. I’ve been in the ring with him. He’s cool, but all scared all the time,” said Ryan about Shakur.
