Bag Dropped: Garcia And Haney’s Poor Performances Jeopardize Lucrative Rematch

The status of the rematch between Ryan Garcia and Devin Haney is unclear after Ryan’s defeat against Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero and Haney’s dreadfully poor performance in victory over Jose Ramirez last Friday in the Times Square event in New York on May 2nd.

Turki Alalshikh hasn’t confirmed if the plans for the Garcia vs. Haney 2 rematch are still in place for October in Riyadh. However, the horrible performances from both have hurt fans’ interest in seeing a second fight. They may need to redeem themselves first against other fighters, preferably high-level contenders.

Rematch in Doubt

It will require Garcia to avenge his loss to Rolly or defeat one of the champions at 147, like Jaron Ennis or Brian Norman Jr. As for Haney, he needs to be put in with a stone-cold killer as well. His performance in his win over Jose Ramirez was so poor that his stock dropped even further. Turki needs to throw Haney in with one of these sharks in a final proving ground type of fight:

– Jaron Ennis– Brian Norman Jr.– Conor Benn– Gary Antuanne Russell– Richardson Hitchins

Promoter Eddie Hearn says Ryan and Haney “dropped the bag” by failing to produce in their tune-up fights. He reveals that Garcia (24-2, 20 KOs) and Haney (32-0, 15 KOs) were supposed to be “facing off” inside the ring after their fights to begin promoting their big rematch in October in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The face-off didn’t happen, which suggests that Turki Alalshikh may choose not to go through with his plans for the Garcia-Haney 2 rematch.

They both needed to win their tune-up fights to lock in their October rematch. Even though Haney did his part, defeating Ramirez, he was timid and threw only 224 punches the entire 12-round fight. Haney landed 70, but he looked afraid to stand and fight. Commenator Tim Bradley says he thinks Devin has PTSD from the beating he took against Ryan Garcia last year on April 20th in Brooklyn, New York.

Ryan was knocked down in the second round by the heavy-handed Romero (17-2, 13 Kos), and surprisingly outboxed the remainder of the way in losing a 12-round unanimous decision by the scores 115-112, 118-109, and 115-112.

Nerves and Inactivity

“Ryan and Devin dropped the bag in the biggest bag drop you’ve ever seen,” said promoter Eddie Hearn to Fighthype, reacting to Ryan Garcia and Devin Haney’s terrible performances last Friday night at Times Square in New York City.

Hearn is right. Both Haney and Garcia blew their chance to make a goldmine of cold, hard cash with their awful performance last Friday night. Both were equally poor and there’s no way on Earth that Turki can put them in with each other in a rematch and it be well received by the boxing public.

“Tonight was going to be them facing off for the big rematch,” continued Hearn. “Props to Rolly, but Ryan just didn’t turn up at all. He didn’t try to win the fight, did he? I know he got buzzed early, but it wasn’t really a heavy knockdown. But he just let the fight pass him by. It’s crazy.”

It looked like Kingry lost his nerve after Rolly dropped him in round two, and didn’t dare to engage after that. You can understand why. Romero looked like Julian Jackson 2.0 in that fight, and was punching holes in Ryan with every shot.

“It was okay,” said Hearn when asked what he thought of Haney’s performance against Jose Ramirez. “I told him, ‘You really needed to hold your feet a little bit more. He actually buzzed Ramirez a few times, but I think there were a lot of nerves. I think he’s [Haney] been out for a year. Ryan has been out for a year as well. Inactivity kills. We saw that tonight.”

What is Hearn talking about? Haney was NOT “okay” with his performance against Ramirrez. He was even worse than Ryan, because he appeared 100% terrified, and was running from the battlefield. When fans see fighters like that, they view it as straight-up cowardice. That’s the only way to interpret it.

Haney looked jumpy, like a shell-shocked war veteran, unable to handle stressful events without going to pieces mentally. That loss to Ryan Garcia took something out of Haney, leaving the shell that fans saw against Ramirez.