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)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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