Addressing Oscar de la Hoya’s Doubts, Ryan Garcia Confirms ‘Floyd Mayweather Influence’ for Not Fighting Devin Haney

Currently, Ryan Garcia finds himself back where it all began with the Devin Haney fight. When ‘KingRy’ opted to step away from facing Haney, Golden Boy’s promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, took a shot at Floyd Mayweather. He suggested Mayweather influenced Garcia to skip the Haney fight, opting for Rolly Romero, resulting in an empty-handed outcome. Now, as Garcia returns to face Haney, in a recent interview with FightHype, he has openly acknowledged Mayweather’s influence in steering him away from the initial fight.

Recently, Ben Thompson caught up with lightweight sensation Garcia, who revealed in the interview that he’s back in negotiations for a showdown with undefeated multi-division world champion Haney. When asked about the previous situation with Haney, Garcia explained that initially, he wanted to fight against ‘Dream.’ However, after spending time with Mayweather and receiving advice, he changed his direction. In his words,

“I’m not gonna lie. Floyd’s pretty influential. He’s like, ‘Why would you do that? Why don’t you fight Rolly for the belt and then fight Haney?’ I said, ‘That’s makes sense, but I told the people already I’m gonna fight Devin.’ He said, ‘Some things change.’ It is basically what he said I’m paraphrasing here it’s a lot deeper than that and there was a lot more conversation but I made the quick decision, ‘Alright Floyd, that makes sense.’”

Well, it turns out that what Oscar De La Hoya stated and expressed concern about has proven to be true. The boxing legend was indeed the driving force behind Garcia moving away from the fight. Now, they are once again in negotiations for the fight after the Romero bout didn’t materialize. However, to ensure it didn’t happen again, Oscar sent a clear warning to Mayweather.

Oscar De La Hoya Advises Floyd Mayweather to Keep Distance from Ryan Garcia 

Golden Boy Promoter has already shown skepticism about Mayweather influencing his boxer. Given the fact that Garcia and Mayweather recently hung out together, and soon after that, Garcia didn’t want to fight Haney.

Consequently, he took a shot at ‘Money.’ As per Oscar, he doesn’t object if Mayweather wants to share defensive strategies with Garcia in the ring. However, he makes it clear that if Mayweather is being a promoter here, then he prefers not to delve into this further. He stated,

“Floyd, if you want to give Ryan the secret to defense in the ring, that’s great. Other than that, if you are still a promoter like it says here, fu** off.”

Oscar De La Hoya went OFF on Floyd Mayweather over Ryan Garcia 😳 pic.twitter.com/S88x1qnvJ5

— Happy Punch (@HappyPunch) January 11, 2024

While the 50-0 boxer didn’t say anything on this matter, it will be interesting to see if Garcia continues his close ties with Mayweather. He has openly namedropped that Mayweather’s influence left him without a fight.