Ryan Garcia badly misses weight for Devin Haney bout, losing title shot and $1.5m bet
Ryan Garcia has spectacularly failed to make weight for his world super lightweight championship fight with Devin Haney, prompting a series of last-minute negotiations between the camps to enable Saturday’s bout at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center to be staged as a non-title bout.
Garcia weighed 143.2lbs behind closed doors on Friday morning, an eyepopping 3.2lbs above the division limit, ahead of a ceremonial weigh-in open to the public later in the day.
The fight will go forward after the sides came to an undisclosed financial agreement redirecting a portion of Garcia’s purse to Haney. But Garcia will no longer be eligible to win Haney’s WBC title; should Haney lose, the belt will become vacant.
Garcia leaned further into the chaos at the public weigh-in, appearing to chug from a beer bottle as he stepped on to the scale in the Barclays Center atrium, confirming his 143.2lbs weight. Haney tipped the scales at 140lbs on the nose.
“I was drinking a nice ass beer, that shit was fire,” Garcia said shortly after the fighters came together for a tense staredown. “I did my best to make this weight. I put myself through hell.”
Said Haney: “He’s very unprofessional. I told him yesterday his antics would betray him and this is just the start.”
The debacle will do little to assuage ongoing concerns over the mental fitness of Garcia, whose erratic behavior in person and on social media has almost entirely overshadowed the promotion. Earlier Friday as the news spread that he’d missed the weight, the 25-year-old Orange County native fired off a series of tweets implying that he never intended to make the contracted limit, an effective confession of unsportsmanlike conduct.
“I feel great and I got a 3 pound advantage,” Garcia wrote. “Winners do what they have to do I’m still sharp.”
Garcia’s issues making the super lightweight limit first surfaced ahead of his December win over Oscar Duarte, which took place at 143lbs after it was initially contracted for 140lbs.
Haney, a 25-year-old Bay Area native and two-weight champion who is unbeaten in 31 professional outings, has prodded Garcia throughout the run-up to Saturday’s fight, predicting that he would not be able to make the limit. At Thursday’s final press conference, Haney dared Garcia to pay him $500,000 per pound if he missed the weight. Garcia, despite apparent protests from his father and trainer seated alongside him, enthusiastically accepted the wager.
A Golden Boy Promotions statement on Friday morning said Garcia will “honor the handshake made at the final press conference yesterday”.
“We have a fight,” the statement read.
Haney confirmed the $1.5m windfall, tweeting: “Ryan honored the 500k per pound.”