Ticket sales are reportedly slow, with many unsold seats for the Devin Haney vs. Ryan Garcia fight on April 20th at the 19,000-seat Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The picture shows that almost no tickets have been purchased for the event.
Did the organizers make the mistake of choosing the wrong venue and placing it on the East Coast rather than Las Vegas, San Franciso, or Los Angeles? Was there someone mentally asleep at the wheel when they decided where to stage the Haney vs. Garcia fight?
Haney, the Box Office Poison
Given Haney’s history of poor ticket and PPV sales, the promoters should have staged the Ryan fight on the West Coast, preferably in Las Vegas. For some reason, fans aren’t interested in seeing Haney fight.
The situation is looking dire right now, and organizers need to do something to pique fans’ interest in purchasing tickets on the East Coast.
For Haney’s last fight at the Chase Center in San Franciso, they were reportedly giving away the tickets complimentary to fans. That’s a bad sign, given that the fight was staged in Haney’s hometown.
Ryan (24-1, 20 KOs) can’t do it himself if he’s not faced with a popular opponent that can hold their weight, like Gervonta Davis or one of the other talents.
Trash Talk & Empty Promises
Chris Mannix: “You knocked Regis down in the third round of that fight and showed a different level of strength at 140 lbs,” said Mannix to DAZN Boxing. “He [Bill Haney] also believes that you can knock Ryan out in the first round of this fight. Do you think that’s on the table?”
Devin Haney: “I think that Ryan gets overly aggressive, and we’ve seen him make mistakes when he gets overly aggressive. Since the amateurs, he would just go in there and just try and jump on you.
“No real strategy. He would just try and get you up and out of there as fast as possible, and we’ve seen Ryan get caught in those times. If he comes out like that, he will run into something.”
Mannix: “Are you in the right place in your career coming into this fight?”
Ryan Garcia: “This is the best I’ve felt. I feel like I’m coming into myself. I’m at the top of my game right now, mentally and spiritually. I feel like this is my time, my moment. He has the crown right now, the WBC crown, and I’m ready to go get it.”
WBC light welterweight champion Haney believes he’ll knock out Ryan if he comes out “overly aggressive” against him as he’d done in the past in their fight on April 20th on DAZN PPV.
Haney (31-0, 15 KOs) has shown very little power during his career, and in watching his recent heavy bag workouts, he still looks very weak and surprisingly slow for a 140-lb champion.
If Haney is going to knock Ryan out on April 20th, he’ll need to make huge improvements in the power department, and he doesn’t seem realistic about that.
Recently, Haney’s fighting style has morphed into a Shakur Stevenson-like one in which he throws a shot, steps back two or three feet, and then moves around the ring if pursued.
Haney won’t stand his ground and fight, making it impossible for him to entertain the fans or get a knockout of Ryan.