SAN ANTONIO – It wasn’t the spectacular outcome that Ryan Garcia hoped to produce but it was enough for his team to get to work on the next one.

The unbeaten lightweight ended the career-long 15-month hiatus with a twelve-round, unanimous decision win over Ghana’s Emmanuel Tagoe (32-2, 15KOs) this past Saturday at Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas. An adoring crowd of 14,459 was on hand for Garcia’s celebrated ring return, which his team expects to be the first of a busy 2022 campaign now that he’s back at full strength.

“This kickstarts everything,” Eric Gomez, president of Golden Boy Promotions, told BoxingScene.com. “Going into the fight, we needed to see if he would get an early knockout, if he went twelve tough rounds and then plan accordingly. He went twelve rounds but was barely marked up. He feels healthy and the important thing is that he’s back.

“Keeping him active would be great as long as he stays healthy. We’d love to run him three times in 2022. Four would be perfect.”

Garcia (22-0, 18KOs) had just one fight in 2021, headlining the first major U.S. show of the year with an explosive seventh-round knockout of England’s Luke Campbell last January 2 in Dallas. The fight was thought to have set the tone for the red-hot lightweight division and the career progress of Garcia, only for the unbeaten Victorville, California native to instead endure a series of setbacks.

A planned July 9 clash with Javier Fortuna fell through once Garcia decided to step away from the sport for a mental health reset. He was replaced by Joseph ‘JoJo’ Diaz, who outpointed Fortuna to win the interim WBC lightweight title and was prepared to defend versus Garcia on November 27 in Los Angeles. That fight was scrapped after Garcia suffered a hand and wrist injury requiring surgery which sidelined him for the rest of the year.

The fight was the first for Garcia since recovering from the injury, as well as with new head trainer Joe Goossen. The switch came after having spent his past five fights training out of Eddy Reynoso’s facility in San Diego before deciding to train out of his own facility in the greater San Diego area. Garcia and Goossen seemed to gel quickly during the seven-week camp, with hopes of even greater results—and activity—with more time spent together moving forward.

“He’s young, there’s not a mark on him. I don’t see why we can’t get him back out there ASAP,” Goossen told BoxingScene.com. “We’re in an era where these guys just don’t fight very often. I know Ryan wants to change that, get back to fighting every few months and I’m here to help get him to where he needs to be. He’s 23, the hand’s healthy, he’s healthy. He’s ready to fight so I don’t see why we can't keep him active with the dates we have."    

Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox