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Ryan Garcia has dream’s of being the greatest, and he says it will all start with a win over Gervonta Davis should they ever meet in the ring.
“Once I beat Gervonta Davis like I’ve been calling it, that’s going to be like history repeats itself with Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali, who was Cassius Clay at the time when he fought Sonny Liston. He got his respect. He was a loudmouth,” Garcia told Fight Hype. “Once I beat Gervonta Davis’ ass, that’s when they’ll give me credit.”
“Everyone was saying, ‘Muhammad Ali, is he all talk, is he all jibe?’ You remember all that. From the documentaries, that’s what they were saying. Now they’re saying that about me. I’m a f--king beast. I’m telling you. Once I beat Gervonta Davis’ ass, and I’m going to hand it to him. Maybe twice. I’m going to hand it to him twice just to make it clear, ‘He beat him.’”
The 21-year-old Garcia (20-0, 17 KOs) has been calling out the WBA lightweight titlist Davis (23-0, 22 KOs) since scoring a knockout of the year candidate in the first round over Francisco Fonseca in February. Before and after that fight, Garcia promoter Oscar De La Hoya challenged Davis promoter Floyd Mayweather to make the much anticipated fight a reality.
Ali had just turned 22 years old when he first beat Liston in 1964 for the heavyweight title in his 20th pro fight. Fifteen months later, Ali beat Liston again to prove his first win was not a fluke. Garcia won’t turn 22 until August, so he still has some time to draw his own parallels to arguably the sport’s greatest boxer of all time.
“They’re going to give me that respect then [when I beat Davis], and then I’m going to do it like Muhammad Ali and take it to a whole another level and start beating everyone’s ass,” said Garcia. “You know what I want to do? I want to go every month. And I don’t care who it is, just keep fighting every two months. I like to fight, but nowadays they want to create hype and sh-t. It’s going to be hype no matter what, you know what I mean?”
Manouk Akopyan is a sports journalist and member of the Boxing Writers Assn. of America since 2011. He has written for the likes of the LA Times, Guardian, USA Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, Men’s Health and NFL.com and currently does TV commentary for combat sports programming that airs on Fox Sports and hosts his own radio show in Los Angeles. He can be reached on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube at @ManoukAkopyan or via email at manouk[dot]akopyan[at]gmail.com.