New York (AP) – Ryan Garcia has arrived Times Square in a BatmobileHoping to look like a superhero in his return to boxing.
A few minutes later, he was injured and on the canvas, raising his eyes to the display panels and the light lights on the capitals surrounding the ring after being overthrown by the overwhelming left hand of Rolando “Rolly” Romero in the second round.
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Bang! Pow!
Romero then beat Garcia with a unanimous decision on Friday evening, a surprising finish at a boxing night like no other.
Garcia congratulated Romero and his power, but may have been done just as much by the event itself. Even a Batmobile is slow in the traffic of Manhattan, and Garcia did not realize that he would take so long to get from the hotel instead after he had warmed up.
Once he arrived, he noticed that there were so few fans with seats near the arena that there was no crowd push that fans' favorite needed.
“I was not at all a fan of that. It was like a fighting match,” said Garcia. “You could hear everyone and that just didn't seem authentic to me, but no excuses.”
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Times Square has been the framework of Garcia's first fight since he was suspended for a year after testing positive for drugs improving performance in his Victory on Devin Haney who was then canceled and ruled on a non -competition.
The plan was that Garcia and Haney went to a revenge match if they were both winning on Friday, but only Haney (32-0) held his end of the negotiation.
He beat Jose Ramirez (29-3) by unanimous decision in a confrontation of former champions of 140 pounds, after Teofimo Lopez defended his Welter Junior weight title with a unanimous victory over Arnold Barboza Jr.
A night that saw Ring Girls replaced by imitators of celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, Hulk Hogan and Michael Jackson, some people wearing costumes from Elmo and a drummer playing – Standard sites and sounds in Times Square on Friday evening – Romero (17-2) found himself as the star of the show.
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He seemed to earn more confidence in the last laps, leaving more shots because he became clear that Garcia (24-2) did not seem able to stop him. He won 115-112 on two cards and the other judge marked him 118-109.
But Romero, who was eliminated by Gervonta Davis in a previous title in the title in New York, did not argue that he should now take the place of Garcia against Haney.
“Dude, I don't even think about it,” he said. “I think Devin and Ryan should get their revenge match and make a big one.”
The Garcia who overturned Haney three times was not found at Times Square – which will undoubtedly lead to questions about the amount that drugs have affected this performance on April 20.
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“I just think that this year has taken a lot from my body physically and mentally,” said Garcia.
Haney and Lopez were alike. So much to do around them was nothing like a night of normal fighting.
Fighters were delivered to the hotel a few houses of houses by cars, with Lopez arriving in a traditional yellow and Garcia taxi coming to Batman's vehicle. The cars had to stop at traffic lights between the two before stopping outside the ring so that the fighters make a shortened walk.
Lopez, a Brooklyn product that fought in title fights at Madison Square Garden, organized a strong performance in a place unlike the famous blocks of 10 Arena in the south.
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He improved at 22-1, celebrating in front of his fans of the hometown and a crowd who included his colleagues boxers Mike Tyson, Terence Crawford and Shakur Stevenson, and the center of New York Karl-Anthony Towns, with his arms raised in the shadow of the post from which the ball falls on the New Year tourist center.
Turki Alashikh, the chief of the Riyadh season and the General Entertainment Authority of Saudi Arabia, wanted something unique for the first boxing card of Ring magazine in the United States after buying it last year.
Thus started the combat plan at Times Square, bypassing Madison Square Garden and Barclays Center for the trip to New York.
The seventh avenue remained open to traffic – cars only holding up only when the fighters' cars met – with an orange fence blocking the view of the fans standing in the street wondering what was going on inside.
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Those who had access to the edge of the ring – and it was not clear how much they did or how they obtained it, although it was not a large number – could spend the time between the fights by reading the ticker which scrolled along the Times Square studios just above the ring.
“It was not as tall as I expected,” said Lopez about his fight, before adding that it was greater during the night.
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Boxing AP: https://apnews.com/boxing
