Ryan Garcia is close to leaving the only promoter he has ever had. How close depends on who you ask.
The WBC welterweight champion told Fighthype he has one fight left on his Golden Boy contract, and framed it as an argument he has finally won.
I’m going to do my thing. At least Oscar finally admitted it.
Oscar De La Hoya has confirmed the deal is nearly done, but not on the same timeline. He told Uncrowned that Garcia has one fight remaining after the Conor Benn bout on September 12. Several reports have taken Benn to be the last obligation. By De La Hoya’s account, it is the second to last.
Garcia has also called a fight his Golden Boy finale before. He said in August last year that he had one more and that was it, then fought Mario Barrios in February and won the WBC title. The exit has been imminent for a while.
The relationship behind it has been strained for most of a decade. Golden Boy has promoted Garcia since his professional debut in 2016, and the two sides have fallen out publicly in 2019, 2023 and again this year, when De La Hoya went on Instagram Live to say nobody wanted to watch the Benn fight and that he would rather see Devin Haney.
Garcia took issue with that on The Ariel Helwani Show, pointing out his promoter is being paid for a fight he is running down. De La Hoya said afterwards that Garcia requested a sit-down and that the two had patched things up.
Where he goes is the interesting part. Garcia’s last two fights have been on Turki Alalshikh cards, and Alalshikh works closely with Dana White at Zuffa Boxing, which makes it the obvious destination. De La Hoya is aware of it and not enthusiastic, calling Zuffa the Trojan Horse and saying they are coming after everybody.
Garcia is 25-2 with 20 knockouts. He won the WBC title from Barrios in February and defends it for the first time against Benn in Las Vegas.
