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Ryan Garcia is still in the early contender phase of his budding career, yet already has a five-year plan to break free from the sport altogether.
The unbeaten 21-year old lightweight from Victorville, California has emerged as a talent on the rise, with hopes of landing a major title shot within his next 1-2 fights. From there, the goal is to snatch up as much hardware is possible before exiting the game while young enough to still have other options in life.
“I don’t know if I’ll wind up having a long career,” Garcia (20-0, 17KOs) claimed during a recent interview on Impact Network’s ‘Stars and Champions’ series. “I was telling everybody I’m here to come in and out. I’m quick with it. [By] 26 [years of age], I’m beating everybody.
“And when I beat everybody, they’re gonna want me to come back. I said I’m leaving at 26. Nobody believes me, but I’m gonna do it.”
Garcia was two months shy of his 18th birthday when he turned pro in 2016. He emerged as a prospect to watch in a hurry, though it’s been his work under head trainer Eddy Reynoso which has prompted a rapid ascension through the rankings in the loaded lightweight division.
Still, the baby-faced contender is hardly the first fighter to promise to make a clean getaway while he still has his good looks intact. In fact, in that very interview he was reminded that his current promoter, former six-division titlist Oscar de la Hoya (founder and chairman of Golden Boy Promotions) vowed to retire from boxing at age 31 and go to architecture school.
De la Hoya wound up fighting until age 35 (not 40 as suggested in the interview), but was well used up by the time he ran into Manny Pacquiao in December 2008. Garcia vows to only follow in his promoter’s footsteps to the point of his in-ring success, not to where he outlives his usefulness.
“I definitely don’t want to go to architecture school, that’s for sure. But I’ll definitely do something else,” insists Garcia, who has scored back-to-back 1st round knockouts of Francisco Fonseca and Romero Duno in his two most recent fights. “We’ll see, we’ll all see. In my opinion, I think I can fight all these guys and I can beat all the guys I want to fight. Who else would I want to beat other than Gervonta Davis, other than Lomachenko, Teofimo… who else, Devin Haney? All these guys that are in my way.
“I’m not gonna really… what’s gonna be my hunger to fight? I’m gonna have to wait for a kid that’s 15 now to grow up to something huge that I’d want to fight him. But, we’re gonna have to wait and see.”
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox