Culture
Ryan Garcia stuns boxing world, defeats Devin Haney
Ryan Garcia spent the last three months leaving analysts and pundits far more concerned for his personal well-being than impressed with his boxing prowess.
With a handful of explosive left hooks, he reminded the boxing world why he’s “King Ryan,” defeating WBC super lightweight champ Devin Haney by majority decision on Saturday night in what may have already wrapped up the discussion of the best bout of 2024.
“Come on y’all, you really thought I was crazy?” Garcia yelled after the win.
Sweet Chin Music 🎶
Here are all 3 knockdowns @RyanGarcia delivered to @Realdevinhaney to secure the win.#HaneyGarcia pic.twitter.com/18obAwynEE
— DAZN Boxing (@DAZNBoxing) April 21, 2024
Haney entered the night as the heavy favorite, the king of multiple weight classes and an untouched record. He exited the night with a dented legacy.
Garcia’s readiness showed immediately in the first minute of the first round, as he rocked Haney with a pair of explosive left hooks to wake the crowd up. He won the opening round with ease, landing nine power punches.
From there, Haney gained the upper hand with an adjustment to ramp up the pace and keep the pressure on Garcia. Haney’s peppering jabs kept Garcia on his back foot and it appeared the champion was on his way to a straightforward defense against the enigmatic powerhouse.
And then the seventh round came.
With a similar opening-round burst that he displayed in the first, Garcia’s power connected thunderously, this time wowing the crowd by flooring Haney with a hook, handing Haney the first knockdown of his career. A stunned Haney beat the count, but was caught again and again and again as Garcia unleashed the power that rose him to prominence.
But the round turned utterly chaotic soon after, as Garcia was deducted a point for punching on a break as Haney’s legs wobbled like jelly. After fielding months of concerns about his mental wellbeing, a midfight mental lapse was threatening to ruin his momentum.
Garcia bided his time in the eighth and ninth rounds before proving in the 10th that his bursts were far more than adrenaline dumps. “King Ryan” again knocked Haney down, swinging the bout entirely in his favor and making an impossibility suddenly seem realistic.
If that wasn’t enough, Garcia smashed a cherry on top in the 11th round with a third knockdown, drilling Haney with yet another left hook that put the champ back down on the mat and sent Barclays Center into pandemonium.
While Haney rose to his feet and beat the count for a third time, the night was clearly over for the stupefied champ, and Garcia closed the conclusive 12th round by jumping on the corner ropes to soak up the praise of a bewildered crowd after the fight of his life.
FEAR THE KING pic.twitter.com/pogoQxoxXb
— RYAN GARCIA (@RyanGarcia) April 21, 2024
“I would love to rematch, I gave him a shot and I’ll take a shot right back,” Haney said after the loss.
After weighing in 3.2 pounds over the pair’s agreed-upon limit of 140 pounds, Garcia was ineligible to win Haney’s super lightweight title, but that strap may be the only piece of dignity Haney left Brooklyn with.
Garcia entered the night with simply a puncher’s chance, which was a far cry from his days of riding his explosive style into becoming a household name just a few years earlier.
The social media sensation looked like the in-ring real deal as he topped Luke Campbell to earn the WBC interim lightweight title in 2021 and had the potential to become the future face of the sport in the post-Mayweather era, but then saw that hype get snuffed out after losing his undefeated mark in a superfight with fellow phenom Gervonta “Tank” Davis in February 2023.
In that bout, Garcia was first knocked down in the second round, then was floored again by Davis in the seventh round by a brutal body shot. Garcia failed to beat the 10-count, resulting in his first career loss, and was later criticized for quitting, as he rose shortly after the bell rang.
He next took on Oscar Duarte in September and struggled initially with the inferior fighter, and was belted with boos from the Houston crowd before bouncing back with an eighth-round knockout. After fighting at 140 pounds in 2022, Garcia fell to Davis after agreeing to a catchweight of 136 pounds, then he struggled to beat Duarte — a career 135-pounder — at 143 pounds.
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Those scales caused Garcia far more trouble against Haney. On Friday night, Garcia weighed in at 143.2 points and opted to strike a revised deal to keep the fight on rather than try to lose the extra weight. Under the revised deal, Garcia lost $600,000 of his purse and was ineligible to win the super lightweight title.
In a show of boisterous indifference, Garcia later Friday came out to the ceremonial weigh-in chugging a beer and yelling at Haney amid a heated faceoff.
On Thursday, Haney predicted Garcia would miss weight, and asked Garcia to pay him $500,000 per pound missed. A Golden Boy Promotions statement Friday said Garcia will “honor the handshake made at the final press conference yesterday.”
But Friday night’s debacle came as a scant surprise to anyone who has followed Garcia’s social media posts in the buildup to this fight, making Saturday night’s result even more bewildering.
In recent months, Garcia has claimed he was kidnapped by the Illuminati, accused Logan Paul of worshipping Satan, tossed out accusations about Haney’s father, said he was under spiritual attack, said he has proof of alien existence and called Elon Musk the Antichrist, among a slew of other concerning claims and allegations online and in podcast appearances.
Garcia also announced the birth of his second child and his divorce from his wife on the same day in January. In March, Garcia accused Haney of using banned substances, said he was going to bite Haney’s ears off, then later tweeted, “My intention is to Kill Devil Haney.”
All of those antics shrouded both his and Haney’s boxing ascension in the buildup to Saturday night.
With the loss, Haney is 32-1 and his case for being considered among the world’s best pound-for-pound boxers alongside with the likes of Terence Crawford and Canelo Alvarez is crushed.
In 2022, Haney defeated George Kambosos Jr. in a lightweight title unification match to become the first undisputed lightweight champion since Pernell Whitaker in 1990, and the first in the four-belt era. In December, Haney moved up to super lightweight to battle champion Regis Prograis, whom Haney dominated with a masterclass performance to become a two-division champ.
Prior to Saturday night’s stunner, a rematch bout between Haney and Vasiliy Lomachenko, whom Haney defeated in a thrilling fight last May to defend his lightweight title, was thought to be in the champion’s future, as Haney’s unanimous decision victory was disputed by many.
But now, a rematch bout with Garcia ought to be Haney’s next order of business as he attempts to get his career back on track. Saturday night’s defeat revealed plenty of holes in Haney’s game, and left the champion with serious questions about the fortitude of his chin and the legitimacy of his previously untarnished record.
In the hours after his win, Garcia was right back on social media, arguing that the ref should have stopped the bout in the seventh round and clowning Haney for losing to him.
“I know people are so mad,” Garcia posted on X with a pair of crying emojis. “Imagine just imagine a guy that trolled non stop Beats a p4p fighter and then is just chilling bruh that’s hilarious Muhhahahahahaha.”
In the co-main event, underdog Sean McComb was seemingly robbed by the judges as he fell by split decision to Arnold Barboza Jr., who remains undefeated. McComb appeared to dictate the pace of the bout with his slippery defense and unreachable length, while also outlanding Barboza, per the broadcast statistics.
Barboza put together enough momentum in the final frames to squeak out the victory, but wore the story of the bout on his bruised face. The first announced judging scorecard read 98-92 for McComb, but the next scorecard shockingly read 97-93 Barboza. The final scorecard gave Barboza the edge and the bout with a score of 96-94, but there wasn’t a peep of celebration from the favorite.
In the postfight interview, Barboza said he wasn’t surprised by the results, but the crowd voiced their dissenting opinion with a chorus of boos.
Barboza entered the night tabbed as the replacement fighter in the main event if Garcia didn’t show up and with an eye on a future headlining fight with Shakur Stevenson. Barboza may have exited with his perfect record intact, but also with bruised cheek and a blemished reputation.
Required reading
(Photo: Al Bello / Getty Images)
LAS VEGAS – As expected, the upcoming NBA All-Star Game in San Francisco will be a mini-tournament of three teams composed of the top 24 players in the league and the team who wins the Rising Stars Challenge.
The new format, announced jointly on Tuesday by the NBA and National Basketball Players Association, will include three games — two semifinals and the championship — in which the winner is the team to reach 40 or more points first. There is a prize money pool of $1.8 million, with the champion team earning $125,000 per player.
The NBA and NBPA announced today a new format for the 2025 NBA All-Star Game in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In addition, NBA All-Star Voting presented by AT&T will tip off on Thursday, Dec. 19 at 10 a.m. ET.
Full details ➡️ https://t.co/KntyklRIe7 pic.twitter.com/3jIbW1tZWZ
— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) December 17, 2024
The selection of the league’s top stars will not change. Twelve players from each conference will be named All-Stars, with fans, media and players voting on the five “starters” and the seven reserves from each conference decided by coaches.
Those players will then go into a pool for picking by TNT’s three analysts — Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal — who are serving as general managers for the three All-Star teams. They will divide the teams into three groups of eight All-Stars on Feb. 6 before TNT’s weekly doubleheader.
Honorary general manager for the Rising Stars team is another Turner Sports analyst, Candace Parker. The Rising Stars Challenge takes place on the Friday of All-Star weekend; the All-Star tournament is on Sunday, Feb. 16 at Chase Center.
The coaches for the All-Star Game will come from the staff of the first place team in each conference as of Feb. 2. The head coach from each first-place team will coach an All-Star team, an assistant from one of the staffs will coach the Rising Stars champion and another assistant will coach the remaining All-Star team.
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Steph Curry consults with NBA to change All-Star format for San Francisco game
In November, The Athletic reported that commissioner Adam Silver’s office was consulting with players, including the Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry, on changing the All-Star Game again in another attempt to make the event more competitive. Last year’s All-Star Game in Indianapolis set a new record for points scored — and that wasn’t a good thing, as players on both teams simply didn’t play with any effort whatsoever on defense.
“With the elephant in the room being us competing, them trying to shake things up is expected and makes sense,” said Oklahoma City star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who is a two-time All-Star. “But at the end of the day, it’s going to come down to whether the players want to go at it, and I would love to see that. Love to be a part of that for sure, and hopefully it happens.”
Fan voting for All-Stars will begin on Dec. 19. There were no changes announced to All-Star Saturday programming, but it is expected Curry and WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu, who is from the Bay Area, will engage in a shooting competition for the second consecutive All-Star Saturday.
This story will be updated.
Required reading
(Photo: Kyle Terada / USA Today)
Emi Martinez’s save from Nottingham Forest’s Nicolas Dominguez was arguably the best we have seen in the Premier League this season.
Alan Smith, commentating for Sky Sports, dubbed it “miraculous”, which does a slight disservice to changing water into wine, but you get what he’s saying.
Jamie Redknapp said he couldn’t think “of a better Premier League save in my life”, although those last three words felt a little unnecessary.
Anyway, it’s cued up on the video below and, you’ll likely agree, it was great.
But how did it compare with other great saves in the Premier League era?
Saves are much harder to remember than goals, so let The Athletic jog your memory.
The Premier League congratulated itself for existing in 2012 when it ran the Premier League 20 Seasons Awards.
There was a bit of recency bias among the winners, what with Wayne Rooney winning best goal for his shinned overhead kick for Manchester United a year earlier, while 2011-12 was named best season and Nemanja Vidic was voted into the all-star 20-year team.
Gordon’s save against Bolton was fresh in the memory too, but it’s hard to argue against it winning the 2012 award and it stands up very well today.
Zat Knight is only a couple of yards out when he forcefully prods the ball goalwards.
Gordon sticks out an arm…
And claws it over the bar. Points off because it was only from Zat Knight, but still, tremendous save.
Everton’s 1-0 win over Chelsea in May 2022 was iconic in a number of ways: Richarlison celebrated his winning goal with a blue flare, Everton’s victory at a feral Goodison Park went some way to keeping them in the Premier League, and Pickford produced a memorable diving save from Cesar Azpilicueta.
After Mason Mount’s shot hit the post, a sprawling Pickford was outside of the width of his posts as the ball headed to Azpilicueta…
Pickford immediately recognised the danger and curved his sprint behind the goalline to give himself extra room to make the impending save…
… and he has to adjust his body to dive to his right after running slightly past the angle.
“I’ve had worse,” he said after. Oh Jordan, you joker.
The most cat-like save on our list. James is caught short, sorting out Portmouth’s wall, on the opposite side of his goal when referee Uriah Rennie tells Gareth Barry he can take a quick free kick.
James sprints across his goal and dives at full stretch to tip the ball around the post.
Peter Schmeichel, Manchester United vs Liverpool, 1993
Pure reflexology from the OG PL GK (original gangster Premier League goalkeeper).
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It’s a story as old as time; attacker versus goalkeeper, one-v-one, powerful shot, strong save. And there is no better example in Premier League history.
Schmeichel’s left wrist is stronger than steel, forged from working as a cleaner in an old people’s home in his youth.
Don Hutchison shouts “f***” and puts his head in his hands. It’s an appropriate reaction.
There are two good indicators that a special save has just happened:
1) Fans make a goal celebration noise but then just cut to stunned silence; or
2) Players put their head in their hands.
Four Swansea players do this after Joe Hart’s save from Federico Fernandez in 2015.
What preceded their reaction was an acrobatic save of the very highest quality. Fernandez’s header is directed towards the corner…
But Hart fingertips it over the bar.
Miguel Almiron absolutely harrumphs this volley like his life depends on it…
But Alisson unleashes his inner Gandalf and almost screams, “You shall not pass!” with a save that almost defies gravity and physics.
Cudicini let in four goals in this game, a humdinger of a 4-4 thriller at the old White Hart Lane, but he also produced one of the finest saves of the Premier League era.
Tottenham’s Dimitar Berbatov, with a free shot from 12 yards, should obviously score, but when he lines up his attempt Cudicini’s weight is heading left…
… but he adjusts his body and sticks out an almighty right paw to somehow block it.
Probably the save with the quickest reaction time on our list.
Arsenal’s Leno had just blocked from Christian Eriksen, but the ball was headed out to Moussa Sissoko who thwacked it full pelt from the edge of the box.
With two players in the way, Leno can only see the ball at the last millisecond…
But sticks out a hand to divert it over.
Ian Wright tweeted the word ‘Leno’ with several clapping emojis. Can’t say fairer than that.
Right, please leave your “I can’t believe X save was included, I could have saved that” and “Why isn’t X save on the list, I’m unsubscribing” comments below. Cheers.
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(Top photo: Martinez’s save against Forest; by Shaun Botterill via Getty Images)
Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court.
This week, Emma Raducanu made her plans for 2025, the off-season, well, happened and the Australian Open dealt out some not-so-wild wildcards.
If you’d like to follow our fantastic tennis coverage, click here.
How will Emma Raducanu handle her rise back up the rankings?
Raducanu started 2024 ranked world No. 301 after an injury-ravaged 2023. Thanks to her ‘special’ ranking — the WTA term for a protected ranking — and the occasional wildcards that come the way of a Grand Slam champion, she could compete at most of the events she wanted to while taking breaks when necessary. Her ranking now stands at No. 57.
“One thing with the WTA is we’re pretty much made to play the events when we’re in a certain ranking. Where my ranking was and is at, I didn’t have to play every single event,” she told reporters at London’s National Tennis Centre this month.
Raducanu added that “having to play every single tournament” is a major burden not just physically, but also in producing a balanced schedule. “Having a mulligan to not play a tournament would be a really good addition,” she said.
One of the big discussion points this year has been the demands placed on players by the WTA’s increased number of mandatory events, which includes all Grand Slams, all WTA 1000 events and six 500-level tournaments for those ranked high enough for automatic entry (designed to bolster those events just below the majors and to give the 250-level events just below them more of a regional focus). The world No. 2, Iga Swiatek, lost the top spot to Aryna Sabalenka in October after not playing enough 500-level events.
“It’s not going to end well, and it makes tennis less fun for us, let’s just say,” Swiatek said in a news conference at the Cincinnati Open in August. “I don’t think it should be like that because we deserve to rest a little more.”
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Raducanu, who missed the Asian hard-court swing with a foot injury in September after organizing her season around that block of tournaments, said that the time away helped outside of physical recovery. She went to see her grandmother in China, which “was a bit of a turning point”.
“I was playing the piano, painting. Exploring my artistic side a bit. It just got me thinking. That final foot injury just had me saying, ‘I want to stay healthy next year’.
“That was probably a big moment where I wanted to spend more time and energy on my fitness.”
Raducanu, who subsequently brought on fitness coach Yutaka Nakamura for the 2025 season, wants to plan her events “holistically” after feeling her scheduling was too short-sighted. She wants to ask herself, “What is the best for me this year? What is the main objective? How are we going to build the schedule around the main objective for this year?”
Whatever she decides, Raducanu says that in 2025: “Everything I want to do is match a philosophy. I don’t want to be doing things that are bitty. Every decision I make, I want it to link to a deeper reason. Not just, ‘OK, it’s spontaneous, I’m going to do this’. Everything has to link together.”
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Charlie Eccleshare
Once again, how wild is a wildcard?
With prize money for just making the first round of a Grand Slam approaching $100,000 (£80,000), the countries that host them may want to consider adjusting their process of handing out wildcard entries.
It’s always been reasonably unfair to young players from countries other than Australia, France, Great Britain and the United States that they basically have no shot at receiving the free pass that host countries hand out to their own. With the windfall it now brings, it seems increasingly out of whack.
Tennis Australia released its wildcards for next month’s Australian Open on Friday.
Stan Wawrinka got one. He’s 39, a three-time Grand Slam champion who won the tournament in 2014. He also got whipped in the first round of the U.S. Open by Italy’s Mattia Bellucci. He’s ranked world No. 161 right now.
Stan Wawrinka beat Rafael Nadal in the 2014 men’s singles final. (Matt King / Getty Images)
Other than the entries they swap with other Grand Slam hosts and the champion of an Asia-Pacific playoff, the Aussies kept the rest for themselves. The other men:
- Tristan Schoolkate, 23, 1-3 in 2024 on the ATP Tour, ranked 168.
- Li Tu, 28, 0-4 on the ATP Tour in 2024, ranked 174. He did take a set off Carlos Alcaraz at the U.S. Open.
- James McCabe, 0-4 on the ATP Tour in 2024, ranked 256.
On the women’s side, Daria Saville, No. 108, and Ajla Tomljanovic, No. 109, are defensible. They’ve battled injuries in recent years, have been inside the top 50 and are right on the cusp of a main draw spot. They may very well get in on ranking once withdrawals begin.
Maya Joint, 18, isn’t far behind at No. 116, but she’s just 1-2 at the tour level. Emerson Jones is 16 and ranked No. 375. Talia Gibson is 20 and ranked No. 140 but is yet to win a tour-level match.
Grand Slams rightly market themselves as the pinnacle of tennis. That may be true, but they’re not nearly as tough as they could be with fewer home-country free passes into their main draws.
Matt Futterman
And how long is a piece of string (or a tennis off-season)?
Do you want to know why players complain so often about the off-season? Because there isn’t one. Not really.
Ben Shelton took four days off.
Carlos Alcaraz didn’t touch his rackets for 10 days, which might sound like a lot.
Players competing in the United Cup have to be in Australia on Christmas Eve, a mere eight days away. It takes two days just to get there from much of the world. A handful of top players, including Taylor Fritz, are heading to Abu Dhabi for the World Tennis League exhibition that runs December 19-22. Many of them use it as part of their pre-season prep.
Fritz played his last 2024 match at the Davis Cup on November 20. Between then and landing in Abu Dhabi, he will have squeezed in a 10-day fitness block in Florida and a 10-day on-court camp in L.A. Factor in intercontinental travel and you can count the off-days on just about one hand.
That’s not an off-season. That’s a long weekend.
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Recommended reading:
🏆 The winners of the week
🎾 WTA:
🏆 Viktorija Golubic (No. 7 seed) def. Celine Naef 7-5, 6-4 to win the Limoges Open (125) in Limoges, France. It is her fourth WTA 125 title.
📅 Coming up
🎾 ATP
📍Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: ATP Next Gen Finals featuring Arthur Fils, Alex Michelsen, Jakub Mensik, Learner Tien.
🎾 Exhibition
📍Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates: World Tennis League featuring Iga Swiatek, Daniil Medvedev, Aryna Sabalenka, Nick Kyrgios.
Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the men’s and women’s tours continue.
(Top photo: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)
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