Gabriel Rosado wants Ryan Garcia to hold off on fighting WBC light welterweight champion Devin Haney until he’s had time to prepare for him.
Rosado feels that Ryan (24-1, 20 KOs) needs to face someone with a similar style to Haney (31-0, 15 KOs). He doesn’t say who that would be, but Richardson Hitchins or Shakur Stevenson would be excellent choices.
Now, if Ryan could be trusted to beat those fighters, it would be worth the risk of using them to prepare for Haney.
Most fans believe that the Golden Boy-promoted Kingry Garcia needs more experience before taking on Haney, because he didn’t look great in his previous fight against Oscar Duarte last December.
In Ryan’s mind, he must see something in Haney’s game that he thinks he can exploit, and hard to imagine what he’s homing in on.
Devin’s last opponent, Regis Prograis, barely laid a glove on him in their fight on December 9th and lost a wide twelve round decision.
Preparing for Haney: opponent to Mimic
“Boxing right now has so many great fights to be made. You got Haney, you got Shakur, you got Crawford and Tank,” said Gabriel Rosado to Fighthype. “Man, it’s loaded right now, and exciting to see Ryan calling out Haney and wanting to fight the best.”
It would be interesting to know what Ryan Garcia’s trainer, Derrick James, thinks about the idea of him rushing into a fight with Haney.
Unless Derrick is blind, he had to have noticed how lost Ryan looked against Duarte, looking clueless using the Philly shell and turning his back on the Mexican fighter all night.
James should have been reading Ryan the Riot Act in between rounds as soon as he started using that thing, but he didn’t. He seemed okay with Ryan using it, and there never were any adjustments on his part.
A matter of timing
“It just goes to show you what kind of fighter Ryan is, and I respect that about Ryan because a lot of guys want to respect themselves,” said Rosado. “But when you dare to be great, and you put on a great performance, the fans are going to love that.
“I’ll favor Haney. You can’t count Ryan out. Ryan made changes in his last fight and boxed a little more. I just think it’s a matter of him catching his rhythm with his new trainer [Derrick James] and developing that style of understanding his distance and his jab,” said Rosado.
The problem with Ryan is that he’s gotten too big for his britches and won’t listen to anyone who tells him to take his time before fighting Haney. He’s super rich with the huge money he made from his last fight against Gervonta Davis, and he was already wealthy before that.
So, if Derrick tells Ryan to hold off on the Haney fight, it’s fair to say that he’ll ignore him and take the match anyway – and lose.
“I would like to see Ryan, even though he’s calling out the big boys; I’d like to see him get back in there and sharpen up a little bit before he jumps into a fight with Haney,” said Rosado. “Man, if he wants to fight Haney, my hat’s off to him.
“It’s an art in match-making. Your next fight should be someone that kind of mimics Haney that style to kind of catch that rhythm,” said Rosado when asked what Ryan Garcia should do to prepare for Haney.
“Keep working with your new coach because honestly, man, boxing is about constantly training and practicing where it automatically comes out. You’re not going to get with a trainer and do a couple of camps and change right away.
“It might take a year, it might take two years to honestly learn. I had an 18-year career. There were things that Bernard Hopkins taught me earlier in my career that I didn’t really understand until ten years later. So, that’s boxing. You’re always learning.
The Ryan X-factor
“Ryan is a star. He puts fans in seats. He’s a star,” said Rosado. “So, Ryan could fight Haney and win, lose, or draw; if he puts on a good performance, he has that draw where people will want to see him, and that’s what boxing is about. People want to see good fights.”
Ryan is a star but a different type, one that is popular without beating anyone of note and capturing titles. Those types of stars can’t be trusted to win against talented opposition, and that’s why it’s not a great idea for Ryan to fight Haney unless he doubts his ability to beat the opposition that he needs to prepare for a fight against him.
If Ryan doesn’t believe he’s capable of beating guys like Richardson Hitchins, it makes sense for him to face Haney right away.
Devin’s weight
“Haney rehydrating up to 165 lbs? That’s crazy. I wonder when he stepped on the scale,” said Rosado. “You have to remember that I’ve done that before on the day of the fight and actually stepped on the scale to see what I weighed the day of the fight.
“Honestly, sometimes they don’t even tell you to take your pants off or your shoes off because it ain’t an official weigh-in, and sometimes you can hop on that scale with your shoes on and pants on. So, that’s five or six pounds, maybe.
“So, I don’t know if he [Haney] got on the scale officially as you would at the weigh-in or he got on with his clothes, and that made him a little heavy. So, for him to blow up to 165, I don’t see it. I don’t see him having that frame where he’s that big,” said Rosado about Devin.
