Ryan Garcia’s father and trainer, Henry Garcia, has outlined the determining factor for whether a showdown between his son and Shakur Stevenson gets made.
The 27-year-old called out Stevenson immediately after his victory over Mario Barrios, which saw him claim the WBC welterweight title last Saturday.
Prior to their clash, many questioned whether Garcia was in the right mental space to dethrone Barrios, a tough but technically limited world champion.
As it happened, though, ‘King Ry’ was able to drop his man in the opening round, before piecing together a dominant unanimous decision victory in Las Vegas.
But before facing Barrios, Garcia had expressed his desire to lock horns with Stevenson, the WBO super-lightweight champion, in a bid to test himself against one of his sport’s most elite operators.
Stevenson, meanwhile, has insisted that their potential clash can only take place at a catchweight of 144lbs, to which Garcia verbally agreed before defeating Barrios.
Speaking with MillCity Boxing, though, Henry Garcia has said that Stevenson must move up to 147lbs, or else they will pursue a rematch with Devin Haney.
“Absolutely [the Haney rematch is bigger than a Shakur Stevenson fight], by far, there is no comparison. In order for [Stevenson] to fight us, he’s going to have to come up to [147lbs]. Didn’t [Crawford] go up [to fight] Canelo [at 168lbs]? And he got respect, right?
“Why doesn’t Shakur go up to [fight] Ryan? He wants Ryan to [agree to] a catchweight. We don’t want to start going down – unless it makes sense, but I doubt it.”
Stevenson comes off a one-sided points victory over Teofimo Lopez, for which he moved up from 135lbs, and became a four-division world champion last month.
But despite Stevenson’s lofty status as a pound-for-pound star, Henry Garcia firmly believes that a rematch between his son and Haney, the WBO welterweight champion, is a much bigger fight.
Their first encounter came in April 2024, though Garcia’s majority decision victory was later overturned to a no-contest due to him testing positive for banned substance ostarine.