Former two division world champion and Golden Boy Promotions partner, Bernard Hopkins, believes Ryan Garcia needs to tighten up his defense to compete with fighters on the highest level.
Garcia was involved in the biggest fight of his career last Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, when he collided with Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis in a high-stakes pay-per-view headliner.
In the second round, Garcia rushed after Davis with power punches but quickly got dropped by a hard counter.
During the seventh, Davis landed a hook to the body that sent Garcia down for the full count.
Hopkins, who promotes Garcia, expects him bounce back in force.
“I think [Garcia] will be back sooner rather than later. And I think [right now is] the opportunity to correct a lot of things that he brings from the amateurs. And one of those things is defense, and based on how many rounds the fight lasted he has to work on his defense,” Hopkins told Fighthype.com.
“His defense needs to be tighter. That may not be so easy, and he may never make [that change], he may have to live with it all his life. If Ryan Garcia asks me what I see, I’ll tell him that his defense needs to be tighter, and that he needs to at least make an honest attempt to review it, and in the future he can’t fight so upright when he goes in to trade, because he is very exposed. Those are little things that will cost you later and are already taking their toll on you today. And they took a toll on him at that important moment.
“I believe [Garcia] has what it takes to put this loss behind him and achieve greatness. But not now. Today is not great. So let’s work towards that. He’s still young and he can come back. From what I saw in the locker room, he still has that hunger. He was upset, he was apologizing to everyone. But I told him that he doesn’t have to apologize to us, that he knows what he has to do, that I’m with him and that Golden Boy is also with him.”