Devin Haney vs Ryan Garcia fight format: rounds, weigh in, rules…

Devin Haney is one of the best lightweight fighters around, having been undisputed champion at the weight after beating George Kambosos in Australia twice and then sweeping Vasiliy Lomachenko aside. Stepping up to Super Lightweight in December, he ripped Regis Prograis’ belt off him in a boxing masterclass.

Haney prepares for Garcia tilt

Ryan Garcia is one of the most polemic fighters in the game at the moment. Having been open about his mental health struggles, Garcia has the public worried after a string of bizarre social media posts where he supported a wild array of conspiracy theories, claiming that he has evidence of the existence of aliens, suggesting that he will bite Haney’s ears, and alleging that he has witnessed human trafficking and suffered sexual abuse as a child.

In the lead up to his previous bout with Oscar Duarte, Garcia even turned on his own promoter, Oscar de la Hoya.

In this battle, the two fighters are almost mirror opposites, with Haney’s 31-0 career flying largely under the radar despite taking down some of the biggest names in the business. Besides Prograis, Loma, and Kambosos, Haney has put together solid performances to get unanimous decisions over Jorge Linares and Yuriorkis Gamboa.

Garcia: social media to world title

Ryan Garcia, on the other hand, has been the doyen of social media, with a staggeringly huge following. His career has been rock solid with wins over over Romero Duno, Franciso Fonseca, and Luke Campbell, but was taken apart by Gervonta Davis which seemed to send him into a spiral. His previous mental health struggles seemed to loom large in the aftermath with everyone wondering if he could come back. His performance against Oscar Duarte seemed to show that his boxing skill was as sharp as ever, but the increasing strangeness of his outbursts on social media still has people wondering.

As a world title fight, this bout will go 12 rounds, with most experts predicting that it will last every bit of that. Garcia does have a game-changing left hook in his arsenal, so there is always a chance for a stoppage, but Haney is by far the better fighter of the two, with an advantage in every skillset: faster, stronger, more varied weapons.

Unless Garcia sees something in Haney that everyone else is missing, it is difficult to see this as anything other than a solid Haney decision win. The official weigh-in will take place in New York on April 19 at 2pm ET.