By Keith Idec

NEW YORK – Back-to-back victories at lightweight have convinced Ryan Garcia that he should remain within the 135-pound division to pursue his first world title shot.

Oscar De La Hoya, Garcia’s promoter, is confident that the popular prospect-turned-contender will be ready to fight for a lightweight championship at some point in 2019.

“Ryan Garcia will be fighting for a world title next year, shortly,” De La Hoya said following Garcia’s fifth-round stoppage of Braulio Rodriguez on the Canelo Alvarez-Rocky Fielding undercard Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. “And we’re really, really excited about him.”

The 20-year-old Garcia is more excited about his career now that Eddy Reynoso, Alvarez’s head trainer, is guiding it. They worked together for the first time in preparation for the Rodriguez fight, from which everyone on Garcia’s team walked away satisfied.

“I had a strong camp,” Garcia said. “We worked on a lot of things I needed to fix and coming into this fight, I just wanted to show everybody, you know, how much I’m determined to prove that I could really fight, I’m not just on Instagram and I can really do this thing. So that’s really what I wanted to show.”

Garcia (17-0, 14 KOs) displayed fast hands and power while dismantling Rodriguez. He dropped the Dominican Republic’s Rodriguez (19-4, 17 KOs) with a right-left combination in the first round and a left hook in the fifth round.

Referee Ron Lipton stopped their scheduled 10-rounder at 1:14 of the fifth round, once Rodriguez couldn’t answer his count after that second knockdown.

The emerging Garcia’s performance was more impressive than his previous win. The Victorville, California, native won that fight, too, but light-punching Carlos Morales (17-4-3, 6 KOs) buzzed a fatigued Garcia in a 10-round fight he won by majority decision (98-92, 98-92, 95-95).

Garcia partnered with Reynoso following that fight. De La Hoya feels Garcia is back on track and approaching a title shot.

“Ryan has a bright future,” De La Hoya said. “I’m sure he’ll get to a world title and win many world titles, just like past champions did, just like I did. But Ryan will write his own story.”

The confident contender will continue crafting that story at 135 pounds because making the junior lightweight limit of 130 became entirely too taxing.

“One-thirty is gonna be tough for me, just because I’ve been fighting at 130 pounds since I was 16, 15 years old,” Garcia said. “At this point, 135 will probably be my first title shot, because 130 is just too hard. I was killing myself to get to 130. When I fought Jayson Velez, I basically couldn’t move going to the weigh-in. So 135 would be the ideal weight for me to get a world title.”

While ambitious, Garcia recognizes he has work to do before he is ready to beat a world champion.

“In the past,” Garcia said, “I would say, ‘Let’s do it right now.’ But I wanna take my time with this. I wanna savor every moment. And I wanna enjoy this ride. So whatever happens, I will be prepared and I will be ready to go.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.