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via Imago

via Imago

Ryan Garcia defeated WBC super lightweight champion Devin Haney in their much-awaited boxing match on April 20, 2024. In one of the most entertaining build-ups to a fight in the recent past, Garcia seemingly pretended to be having a mental breakdown and having substance abuse problems through his conduct on social media and in media appearances.

This, however, turned out to be a red herring, and Garcia managed to successfully blindside ‘The Dream’. The 25-year-old went on to put a legendary beating on Haney and won a comfortable decision victory. Max Holloway, fresh off his UFC 300 heroics against Justin Gaethje, joined Joe Rogan on his podcast to discuss one aspect of the fight they found “crazy”.

Joe Rogan marvels at Ryan Garcia’s win over Devin Haney

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Ryan Garcia missed weight by 3.2 pounds, weighing in at a shade over 143 lbs, 3 pounds over the 140-pound super lightweight division. And, because he had made a bet with Devin Haney that he would pay $500k per pound of missed weight, ended up paying $1.5 million to ‘The Dream’. In addition, since ‘King’ missed weight, Haney’s WBC title was off the table.

This means that despite dominating Haney for almost the entirety of the twelve rounds, Haney got to keep his title and is still the official WBC 140-pound champion. This came as a surprise to Joe Rogan and Max Holloway, who made it a point to call out ‘Dream’ over this.“It wasn’t for the title, right. Because Devin got to keep the title. F**k that title, keeping that title is crazy. I mean he got humiliated, he got humbled. It’s a wild game,” Rogan said on his podcast.

 

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Holloway pointed out that ‘The Dream’ was bragging on social media that he got to keep the title, which he found surprising, and commented on the unpredictable nature of the fight game. “You know, what’s more crazy? There’s a post of him [Haney] being like, ‘yeah, I still got the title.’ I’m like ‘wow!’… This fight game is wild bro. It’s the most craziest game ever. You’ll be on top of the world one day and have a fight like that. No one even cares anymore, it’s crazy,” the BMF champion said.

And if the sport wasn’t ‘crazy’ enough, there is another potential fight in the making that would be a huge event for both boxing and MMA fans.

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Garcia accepts Sean O’Malley’s call-out to box

After his victory over Haney, UFC bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley, who has been angling for a boxing match for the past year, said that he wanted to box Ryan Garcia. On his ‘TimboSugarShow’ podcast on YouTube, ‘Suga’ revealed that he had already talked to the UFC about it. The promotion, according to O’Malley, was on board and would be looking to co-promote the boxing match. However, the only condition the Dana White-led organization put was that the fight should make “enough money.” 

The champion felt that he was two blockbuster performances away in the UFC from creating enough hype for a boxing match against Garcia. Meanwhile, the 25-year-old took to Twitter and responded to the UFC fighter in characteristic Garcia fashion. “RAINBOW CACA BRAIN WANTS TO BOX BE PREPARED TO BLEED RAINBOW,” he tweeted.

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The American felt that a boxing match between him and O’Malley wouldn’t be fair and has claimed he to face an MMA fight between him and the UFC bantamweight champion. “MAN BUN Slash Connor Clone Wants a boxing match hmmm I wanted MMA but let’s do it,” Garcia wrote.

What do you think about a potential Garcia and O’Malley boxing match? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.