Ryan Garcia says he’s targeting WBC welterweight champion Mario Barrios for his next fight, viewing it as an ideal money-making clash that can give him leverage for a unification. He believes Barrios will agree to fight him because he can make “good money.”
Blueprint for Leverage
Predictably, Barrios will readily agree to give Ryan a free world title shot because there’s a lot of money to be made by the vulnerable WBC 147-lb champion.
“I have not said this publicly, but I want Mario Barrios. I’m going to go for it,” said Ryan Garcia to Showbizz’s YouTube site about wanting a title shot against WBC 147-lb champion Mario Barrios.
“I’m going to go for it. If you want to make some good money, let’s go run it. I can leverage to, ‘Alright, Rolly, I got that,’ or Manny [Pacquiao]. If Manny beats him, then I got to fight him. I only know how this [money] works,” said Ryan.
Garcia (24-2, 20 KOs) states that he wants to capture the WBC belt from Barrios (29-2-2, 18 KOs), and then use that belt to set up a lucrative unification bout against the winner of the January 24, 2026, fight between WBA champion Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero and Manny Pacquiao. That fight still hasn’t been confirmed, but the rumors are that they’re finalizing it.
It sounds like a good plan that Kingry has cooked up, but for it to work, he would still need to defeat Barrios. The way Ryan looked in his last fight against Rolly, losing a 12-round unanimous decision on May 2, 2025, he’s not going to defeat Barrios.
Ryan looked gunshy after being dropped by Romero in round two, and did almost nothing for the remainder of the fight. He let Rolly walk him down, hitting him with single shots and making him look like a below-average fighter. Losing to a fighter of Romero’s club-level class, a guy that had been destroyed in eight rounds by Isaac ‘Pitbull’ Cruz on March 30, 2024, put things in perspective.
Fan Appeal Still Strong
With Ryan Garcia’s 12.1 million Instagram followers, it doesn’t matter that he was beaten in his last fight. Many of them would order a fight between him and Barrios on DAZN PPV if it happens. Many of Ryan’s followers aren’t boxing fans; they view him as an influencer for his charisma, wealthy lifestyle, and appearance.