Compubox’s punch statistics lend numerical context to tonight’s big shocker. Garcia landed 87 of 214 punches (40.7%), compared to 106 of 285 for Haney (37.2%).
Notably, Garcia landed nearly twice as many power shots (95) as Haney (45), landing at a 41% clip after Haney’s previous 10 opponents landed only 25%.
Ryan Garcia wins by majority decision!
Garcia has handed Haney the first defeat of his professional career in stunning fashion. He’s just won a majority decision to score the seismic upset. The judges’ scores were 114-110 and 115-109 for Garcia with the third scoring it a 112-112 draw.
Round 6
Garcia opens the sixth guns ablaze, meeting Haney in the center of the ring and reeling off no fewer than 20 uncontested punches while whipping the crowd into a frenzy. A couple of them get through Haney’s guard but he weathers the barrage well, then picks up right where he left off in the fifth, using educated pressure to score. Close round and the early spurt was enough for Garcia.
Arnold Barboza Jr has just won a highly controversial split decision over Northern Ireland’s Sean McComb. It was a bit of snoozer, with long periods of inaction drawing boos from the nearly full Barclays Center crowd. But the Belfast southpaw was clearly getting the better of the action and the result came as a surprise. One ringside judge had it 98-92 for McComb while the other two scored it 96-94 and 97-93 for Barboza. (The Guardian had it 97-93 for McComb.)
The announcement of the decision was greeted with a chorus of boos and catcalls that only grew in volume when Barboda conducted an in-ring interview before departing the arena floor. Compubox’s punch statistics reveal that Barboza landed 10-of-44 shots per round after averaging 22-of-70 in his previous seven outings.
That concludes the undercard. Haney and Garcia should be making their ring entrances in short order.
Hello and welcome to Barclays Center for tonight’s fight between Devin Haney and Ryan Garcia. We’re ringside in Brooklyn for what, at least on paper, is a top-drawer matchup between two of America’s brightest young boxing stars, both 25 years old and at the front of their athletic primes. But following one of the most unusual build-ups to a major fight in recent memory, defined by Garcia’s highly erratic behavior and questions over his mental fitness, it’s left many asking whether it should even be taking place.
Haney (31-0, 15 KOs) unified all four major titles at 135lbs with a career-best win over Vasiliy Lomachenko nearly a year ago, before climbing to 140lbs and becoming a two-weight champion with an impressive shutout of Regis Prograis to win the WBC’s version of the super lightweight title.
Garcia (24-1, 20 KOs), a social-media superstar with upwards of 10.5m Instagram followers with 7.5m more on TikTok, was supposed to be fighting for that strap tonight. But he came in an eye-popping 3.2lbs over at yesterday’s weigh-in, making him ineligible to win the title. (Should Haney lose, the belt will become vacant.)
The weight debacle was the culmination of a months-long pattern of unsettling behavior by Garcia, both in person and on social media. Since the bicoastal press tour announcing the fight where Haney claimed to smell alcohol on his rival’s breath, Garcia’s once-polished presence on social media has descended into a disturbing blur of conspiracy theories and apparent cries for help, not least an X Spaces stream with Andrew Tate (and subsequent tweetstorm) where he claimed he was kidnapped by “the elites” at Bohemian Grove, the secretive Sonoma County club for the rich, and “forced to watch kids getting raped”.
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Owing to Garcia’s volatile comportment, there were many points over the past few months where it didn’t seem like we’d ever make it to fight night. But here we are. And we the fighters should be making their ringwalks for the main event in a little more than an hour’s time.
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