On April 25, 2021 — closing in on five years ago — Ryan Garcia posted these words on Instagram:
“I know this news may be disappointing to some of my fans but I am announcing today that I am withdrawing from my July 9th fight. At this time it is important to manage my health and wellbeing. I have decided to take some time off to focus on becoming a stronger version of myself. I hope to be back soon and am looking forward to stepping back into the ring when I am my healthiest self. I want to Thank God, my family, my doctors and my supporters.”
Ever since that moment when Garcia went public with his mental health struggles — he later detailed that he’s bipolar and suffers from depression, anxiety, and panic attacks — it has been appropriate to extend compassion and to cut slack.
Garcia showed vulnerability. We should respond with sensitivity.
Hugs, not hate. Understanding, not undercutting.
You never know what someone is going through privately — except Garcia opened that door and let us in to an extent, and so when he acts up or acts out, we should pause and consider the role mental illness may be playing and grant him grace.
Up to a point, anyway.
Because whatever the chemical reasons, it gets harder and harder with each passing incident to deny that Garcia is a jerk. A brat. A petulant child. An asshole, to use the word that feels most fitting, even if I’m not comfortable putting it in the headline.
In writing about last week’s press conference formally announcing Garcia’s February 21 fight against Mario Barrios, my colleague Jason Langendorf called Garcia “boxing’s king of cringe,” and yes, “King Ry” is absolutely that.
But I wish that was where it ended. I wish he merely made me mildly uncomfortable and embarrassed for him, as he did throughout that presser, particularly in his exchanges with his former trainer Joe Goossen.
It’s so much worse than that, unfortunately. His public persona (I have no idea what he’s like privately) is abhorrent.
He’s gone on racist diatribes against Black people and Muslim people (which together got him temporarily removed from the WBC’s ratings) and has made multiple anti-LGBTQ statements. He was arrested and criminally charged with a misdemeanor count of vandalism for causing an estimated $15,000 in damage to a Beverly Hills hotel. And he put opponent Devin Haney’s health at greater risk than that normally faced by boxers by (seemingly intentionally) failing to make weight and by fighting with the performance-enhancing drug Ostarine in his system.
So, yeah. Garcia has done and said things that only a lowlife would say and do.
And I’m not sure if I should hate him for those things, or show lenience and empathy because he suffers from mental illness.
So I turned to a professional. This week I spoke with Alex Williams, a teaching professor and licensed psychologist at the University of Kansas and a longtime boxing fan, for his insights.
Williams called upon the frequently cited story of Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and U.S. President Ronald Reagan and what Peres said when he learned that Reagan planned to visit a German cemetery where members of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi army were buried:
''A friend is a friend. A mistake is a mistake. When a friend makes a mistake, it is still a mistake. And a friend is still a friend. Mr. Reagan remains a friend.”
In short: People contain multitudes, and we should be able to separate the different layers people possess.
“My analogy here is, if Ryan Garcia does have, as he says he has, significant mental illness, and then he acts like a jerk, Garcia remains Garcia, and the episodes of mental illness remain the episodes of mental illness, and the disrespectful behavior remains the disrespectful behavior,” Williams said. “It would be a mistake to just say Garcia’s entirety as a person is defined by his jerk behavior, but at the same time, the jerk behavior should not just be completely absolved as, ‘Well, that’s just what happens when one has mental illness — they must act like a jerk.’ That’s not true. And it doesn't excuse all the damage you do to people when you are behaving that way.”
The press conference exchange with Goossen last week was by no means Garcia at his worst — he wasn’t breaking any laws, displaying bigotry or putting anyone in harm’s way.
But his behavior nevertheless produced a visceral response from me — and a more complicated one because it’s harder to decide whether to hold someone with mental illness accountable when he’s essentially just being douchey.
Garcia kept insisting he was “heartbroken” and “offended” over Goossen accepting an offer to train Barrios — despite Garcia and Goossen not having worked together in nearly three years — while the Hall of Fame trainer repeatedly tried to be the bigger man.
“I thought I was being courteous and generous, and that’s what I’m trying to be here, and I hope you don’t take offense to it, because I don’t ever want to offend fighters,” Goossen said. “All I can do is try to be gracious to you, but I’ve gotta support my guy.”
Garcia’s response was to continue to insist he felt betrayed and try to paint Goossen as the bad guy — very much the opposite of Goossen’s well-earned and long-held reputation throughout the boxing business.
A few minutes later, Garcia pulled a T-shirt reading “IM A TRAITOR” out of his backpack and tried to present it to Goossen.
Shortly after that, Garcia gave Barrios the ol’ fake handshake maneuver, extending his right hand and then pulling back, before proceeding to knock to his own chair over the way a toddler in the throes of the “terrible twos” might.
“There is a continuum with bipolar disorder or other mental illness,” Williams said. “Somebody who is truly in the midst of psychosis and doesn’t understand what’s going on, I would be much more OK with saying they're absolved from responsibility because they truly are disconnected from reality. If a guy's shadowboxing an imaginary opponent on a street corner, well, he’s responsible if somebody gets hit, at least in a legal sense, but in a moral sense, I’d say he doesn't understand what’s happening.
“But given that Garcia got the T-shirts printed up and everything, clearly there was a sustained effort behind that. This wasn’t something that just happened in the spur of the moment.
“On that continuum between the person who is psychotic and doesn’t understand what’s happening and the person who is, let’s say, having a bad day and exhibiting very mild mental distress, Garcia is somewhere along that continuum.”
To keep it in the world of boxing, former heavyweight contender Ike Ibeabuchi stands out as a prime example of someone closer to the psychotic end of the spectrum. Ibeabuchi also was convicted of much more serious crimes than anything Garcia is known to have done, serving prison time for battery with intent to commit a crime and attempted sexual assault.
Ibeabuchi was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, medicated until he was deemed competent enough to enter an Alford plea and punished accordingly even though he might not have been mentally competent when the crimes were committed.
So Ibeabuchi presents a much, much more extreme case of boxing fans, and humans generally, being challenged to determine how much ire to direct toward a person and how much to ascribe the issues to mental illness.
As for Garcia, I could be polite and simply say he rubs me the wrong way, or I could be impolite and say I think the world would be a better place if he never opened his mouth again.
Either way, there remains a possibility that, with proper medication and counseling, he could be a lovely guy. From the long distance at which I’m observing him, it’s impossible to know.
Mental illness is a subject to be taken seriously, and the world would be a better place if we all defaulted to understanding and empathy.
Is Ryan Garcia a jerk? It sure seems that way.
But should we hold him responsible for everything he says and does that makes him come off as a jerk?
That’s a question my rational side will continue to ask — up through and beyond the moments my emotional side will surely spend on February 21 rooting for Mario Barrios to put him down and keep him down.
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.
