Veteran trainer Teddy Atlas has bluntly called out the New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC) to immediately confront the troubling behavior of super lightweight title challenger Ryan Garcia.
With less than a month to go before California’s Garcia is scheduled to meet unbeaten WBC 140-pound champion Devin Haney at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, Atlas made a pointed pronouncement regarding Garcia’s “scary” social media posts.
“If you’re a commission and you do not force him to see qualified psychiatric people to be evaluated … shut the commission down,” Atlas said on Thursday’s episode of ProBox TV’s “Deep Waters.” “Why are the taxpayers paying for that commission if they’re going to behave like this in a case like this?”
Atlas joins powerful voices in requesting an intervention for the 25-year-old Garcia (24-1, 20 KOs), who has previously taken time away from boxing to tend to his mental health.
Earlier this week, Garcia’s former gym mate, four-division world champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, said he hopes Garcia has some help. He added that if Garcia were still in camp with Alvarez, the April 20 bout would likely be postponed.
“There’s no sense in having a commission with all the stuff that’s out that we’ve seen,” Atlas said on ProBox TV. “That scares us. It’s scary. He’s smoking weed, drinking a bottle of liquor, saying he got kidnapped by a group that took him into the woods and forced him to watch little kids get raped. …
“When a guy put in a huge fight is in that kind of mental condition,” Atlas said, it needs to be confronted.
Former New York commission chairman and current Sirius/XM radio host Randy Gordon spent a good portion of his Friday show on the Garcia topic.
“I know if I was back in my seat, it’s my responsibility to protect the health and safety of the fighter,” Gordon told Boxing Scene on Friday. “From what we’ve heard from Ryan Garcia, it’s unintelligible. So I would sit him down for an evaluation. And if he chose not to sit down for that evaluation, the fight is off.
“And if he’s off, the fight is off. We all are feeling there’s something wrong, and I agree 1,000 percent with Teddy on this. If [the New York commission] lets it go without an evaluation, they should be disbanded.”
Kim Sumbler, the executive director of the New York commission, did not immediately respond to voicemail and text messages left to her by Boxing Scene.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity because of privacy matters related to an athlete’s health, another state’s commission head told Boxing Scene that it reached out to a member of Garcia’s team after observing the fighter’s erratic social media posts and was told, “It’s all an act.”
Garcia has previously said he has sought to “troll” Haney, perhaps to make him believe he’s not preparing properly for the bout.
Yet this latest behavior, on top of Garcia’s past history, should be treated as a cry for help, Gordon said.
“[Sumbler] has to at least say she’s looking into it,” Gordon said. “There’s no way [Garcia] should be allowed in that ring in New York or anywhere else without someone assessing him.”
Speaking generally, California State Athletic Commission Executive Officer Andy Foster agreed the prudent response is to investigate.
“If I have a high-level fighter doing that on social media,” he said, “I’m going to call them myself and have my doctors talk to him.”