Ryan Garcia fought the most complete fight of his career in a fight that he dominated from the opening bell to the final bell while easily defeating Mario Barrios.
With the unanimous decision victory over Barrios on Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Garcia became the new WBC welterweight champion to win the first major world title of his career. With a right hand over the top, Garcia dropped Barrios 24 seconds into the fight and would go on to steam roll Barrios the rest of the fight to win unanimously on the judges’ scorecards by the scores of 119-108, 120-107 and 118-109.
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Garcia’s biggest win of his career comes on the heels of a lot of drama as he lost a decision to Rolando “Rolly” Romero last May in his bid for the WBA “regular” welterweight title.
After earning the biggest win of his career until tonight in April 2024 when he defeated Devin Haney by majority decision after knocking Haney down multiple times. The big win was short lived due to Garcia testing positive for a banned substance which forced the result to be overturned to a no-contest.
Now that he’s an official champion, Garcia is back in driver seat when it comes to feature fight negotiations and has multiple big-time options in the 147-pound division. Although those on DAZN would like many to believe a fight between Garcia and 140-pound kingpin Shakur Stevenson is next the fight the public wants to see is Garcia vs. Haney 2.
With Haney being the reigning and defending WBO welterweight champion, a fight with Garcia would be a welterweight unification fight that would be must see television. If the version of Garcia that showed up Saturday night against Barrios shows up in the rematch with Haney the man they call “The Dream” will be in for another long night.
