Oscar De La Hoya, the Hall of Fame fighter and CEO of Golden Boy Promotions, has an interesting idea to one day settle the growing beef between pound-for-pound king Canelo Alvarez and unbeaten rising star Ryan Garcia: a catchweight meeting inside the ring.
Garcia (21-0, 18 KOs) will snap a 15-month layoff on April 9 when he faces fellow lightweight Emmanuel Tagoe (32-1, 15 KOs) at the Alamodome in San Antonio. The 23-year-old phenom, who has a massive social media following that includes 8.7 million Instagram followers, recently recovered from a wrist injury and canceled a return last summer for mental-health reasons, which he later admitted included thoughts of suicide.
Nearly all of the headlines surrounding Garcia's comeback, however, have centered upon his suddenly tenuous relationship with Alvarez after Garcia announced last month he was leaving trainer Eddy Reynoso and Team Canelo in favor of Joe Goossen. The soap opera only escalated in recent days when Alvarez criticized Garcia's work ethic, leading to a lengthy Twitter response from the young fighter who, until recently, looked up to Alvarez as a mentor.
Canelo doesn’t know the facts, The first camp I had with eddy went great then everything went bad he only showed up two weeks before fonseca fight and that’s when i first asked my manager to talk to him about finding a new trainer. Vergil Ortiz left bc eddy never showed.
— RYAN GARCIA (@RyanGarcia) March 1, 2022
The truth also is that’s not even the main reason I left deciders to part ways. Canelo knows why I’m just going to keep it to my self and Focus on the fight I have.
— RYAN GARCIA (@RyanGarcia) March 1, 2022
De La Hoya, who promotes Garcia and formerly served in the same role for Alvarez, was asked by CBS Sports on Tuesday to elaborate upon Garcia's cryptic response about the real reason his fighter cut ties with Reynoso, a two-time trainer of the year.
"I don't know, but I hope it's a future fight against Canelo and Ryan Garcia in the near future," De La Hoya said.
While De La Hoya's comments seem laughable on the surface considering Garcia competes at 135 pounds and Alvarez is the undisputed champion at super middleweight (and is moving back up to 175 pounds in May), "The Golden Boy" went out of his way to bring up the topic a second time when asked about the fallout of his messy 2020 divorce with Alvarez, whom De La Hoya began promoting in 2009.
De La Hoya, like Alvarez, once gained his own promotional independence when he left Top Rank's Bob Arum to start his own company while still an elite fighter. And the plot only thickened last week when Alvarez announced he was returning to fight on DAZN for a two-fight deal, the same platform De La Hoya still holds an exclusive promotional deal.
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"It's different circumstances when I left Bob Arum but I wish [Alvarez] the very best," De La Hoya said. "We are not best of friends, but he is a colleague of mine and I wish him the best. He's doing for boxing what I did for many years in the past. He's the guy who has the torch now and I wish him the very best but you never know. Down the road, three years or four years, Ryan Garcia and Canelo at 165. You just never know."
Amid a string of 1-on-1 satellite interviews, Garcia was asked by CBS Sports whether De La Hoya's idea of fighting Alvarez was even realistic and declined to answer directly while a member of his team protested the question off camera. Instead, Garcia would only say with a wry smile, "April 9, I'm beating Tagoe's ass. Just know that."
But during an interview with a Mexican television outlet just moments before, Garcia was a bit more cryptic when asked the same question.
"I have no beef with Canelo," Garcia said. "But would I ever fight him? I don't know, I don't know."
One thing Garcia did address is his unhappiness with Alvarez openly criticizing his work ethic. The comments date back to a series of 2021 interviews in which Alvarez praised Garcia's talent but questioned his dedication and said he's "wasting his time." Alvarez reiterated similar thoughts during interviews over the past week.
"I have already addressed it on social media and we kind of just have to speak the facts and get on with it," Garcia said. "I'm ready to fight April 9. This whole pretend beef, there is no beef here. I have nothing but respect for Canelo, but I can't let somebody talk about my work ethic when it's definitely not true. I'm a hard worker and I've always been that.
"I'm just going to speak facts to him. I'm not going to beef with him, I'm just going to say, 'you know what the facts are,' and move forward."
Pressed further on Tuesday regarding his cryptic tweets teasing a deeper issue with Alvarez and Reynoso that has yet to go public, Garcia's team interrupted before he could answer by screaming, "next question!"
Garcia last fought in January 2021 when he rose from knockdown in Round 2 to finish Luke Campbell via a thrilling seventh-round TKO for the biggest win of his young career.
