Shakur Stevenson believes the WBC lightweight champion Devin Haney will be victorious, predicting a knockout win over an unfocused Ryan Garcia on April 20th in their showdown on DAZN PPV.
Garcia: Focused on Promotion, Not Preparation?
Stevenson feels that Ryan (24-1, 20 KOs) has been more focused on promoting and marketing the fight to sell tickets than on preparing his contest against the unbeaten Haney (31-0, 15 KOs).
With tickets not selling for their clash at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, Ryan has put in a lot of hard work trying to drum up fan interest. Haney and his dad, Bill, haven’t done a lot of promotion for the match.
Haney has mostly been busy, while his dad has been talking up a fight against Gervonta Davis, assuming that Devin will defeat Ryan on April 20th. Bill has been so busy trying to hustle the next fight for Devin that he’s dropped the ball on the marketing of this one, and it shows with the poor ticket sales.
Ticket Sales vs. Fight Preparation
“If he can’t get that [Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis rematch], then there’s no other outlet for him to go. I think the only move there is against me,” said Shakur Stevenson to ESNEWS about Ryan Garcia needing to fight him if he can’t get a rematch with Tank Davis after his April 20th fight against Devin Haney.
“Yeah, in my opinion, I think Devin beats him, and I agree with Robert Garcia’s son. He probably gets stopped by Devin just because of what I’ve seen. I’m on the outside. For me on the outside, he’s been kind of like more so focused on selling tickets for the fight.”
Haney and Bill picked Ryan over more deserving unbeaten contenders, obviously for money purposes, but he clearly hadn’t done enough to rate a title shot after being knocked out by Gervonta Davis last year and beating a fringe lightweight contender, Oscar Duarte.
Sparring Footage Concerns
“He’s trying to make it a big fight more than coming prepared and being at his best,” said Shakur. “When I watched the sparring video that I seen where they said he was beating people up, I didn’t view it as him looking super good.
“He looked kind of big and kind of hefty at that point of time. I don’t know. We’ll see. I don’t think he can win,” said Shakur about Ryan.
