The three pounds an effervescent Ryan Garcia elected not to shed in advance of his seismic victory over Devin Haney at the Barclays Center in down town Brooklyn last Saturday, or, if you prefer, the three pounds that proved beyond the chisels of his dedicated sculptors, dependent on the narrative most pliable to your viewpoint, could seem entirely trivial to the casual observer.
It is, when all said and done, just 2.14% beyond the contracted 140 pound Junior Welterweight limit.
Whilst it would be convenient to dismiss the significance of the three pounds and change, nobody wants a boxing superhero with an asterisks besides their name, to omit their impact in any analysis of Garcia’s upset win does a disservice to Haney, the sport and fails to recognise the advantage boxing’s newest enfant terrible sought.
In many statistical fields the difference would be considered within accepted tolerance. Be this political polling or some such numerical pursuit. The benefit it presumes to offer is not even as linear or manifestly decisive as it would appear in other fields where the metrics are more binary and one dimensional. Imagine Usain Bolt starting a 100m sprint race 214cm behind or ahead of the field. Depending on whom you wanted to bestow the perceived advantage or handicap. He may still win, but it is highly likely Olympic history would be altered. A track event with a back wind stronger than 2mph disqualifies any time recorded by participants. This is a rule designed to preserve the integrity of the sport’s records.
Small margins matter in elite sport. Pounds matter in boxing far more than the simple numerical value implies too. It is why there are weight classes. In lower weight classes the divisions are separated by the same miserly three pounds. Super-Flyweight (115lbs) to Bantamweight (118lbs) the last of the three pound steps. The leap from Lightweight (135lbs) to Junior Welterweight (140lbs) the last of the five pound increments. And the gap between Junior Welterweight (140lbs), where Saturday’s fight took place, to Welterweight (147lbs) the first 7 pound class. Garcia was almost half way to Welterweight.
Even the sense of ‘half a weight class’ doesn’t quite reveal all that is lost in the pursuit of 140 pounds or all that is gained in moving the ‘finish line’ to 143.2 pounds. Boxing history shows that Lightweights have beaten Welterweights, fighters move between classes and sometimes box a few pounds within a limit – either by design or accident. It is isn’t definitive in and of itself. Conversation with any fighter will always illuminate the inquisitor to the significance of the extra poundage between the ropes when the bell rings but also confirm just how debilitating the scramble down to the limit can prove to be. I specifically recall former British Lightweight Bobby Vanzie, a fighter with his own eccentricities, and just beyond the other side of his own peak at the time, providing insight into the physical sacrifice and arduous mental battle making weight, and specifically the quest to strip the last pound or two imposes on those required to try. The manner in which it gnarls and twists fighter’s psyche and how the ‘art’ of weight making can become an all consuming objective, to the exclusion of tactics, technique and the inherent confidence all fighters must feel in their own capability and preparedness. Often the last pound or two leaves a fighter depleted beyond the point from which their optimum condition – the crucial alchemy of strength, energy, reflex and mental focus – can be restored.
“I remember driving down to a weigh in, knowing I was really tight. I was chewing toffees just to get saliva in my mouth to spit it out. I hadn’t eaten properly for a couple of days. By this time you’ll try anything. And you’re in a bad mood. I weigh in, I was more than a pound over. Now I’ve got two hours. But I’m spent. Nothing left. But you go in the toilets, my trainer has got the hand driers going, trying to get some heat in the room and I’m skipping – desperately trying to sweat. It’s crazy. And then, then, you’ve got to try and re-energise, convince yourself you’re ready and have a fight. Some fans just don’t understand the process. You look at me here to day. I’m walking around at about 11 stone (154 pounds). I fight at 9 stone 9. (135 pounds). Fans think I’ve got fat to lose. But I don’t. Look at me (lifts shirt). I’m not out of shape!”
The boxing world is filled with stories like this and many ever more extreme. It is a type of madness. All done in the pursuit of advantage. Middleweights trying to box as Welterweights and so on.
It is within that last few pounds that the biggest proportion of self is paid. And why observers may speculate that Garcia considered the $1.5million sanction he had to settle to compensate Haney for the transgression a small price to pay for not draining himself. His chances of winning improved exponentially. A statement substantiated with the hindsight of the night but one widely shared by many experts between the weigh in on Friday and the two fighters climbing the steps on Saturday. $1.5million is small money alongside the multiplication of Garcia’s future purses ensured by victory.
Haney, to his credit, did not lean on Garcia’s missed weight to excuse his defeat. And nobody can ever know how much it would’ve impacted the outcome had Garcia sliced off the outstanding 3.2 pounds. Equally, Haney will never know how much fresher and sturdier he too may have been had he only been stipulated to make 144 last Friday.
Fight fans often bemoan the contractual entanglements that rivals envelop themselves in; rematches, rehydration clauses and the frequency of catchweight bouts. Minutiae of precious little interest to fight fans accustomed to the apparent simplicity of the past. Outcomes in big pay per view events like the one witnessed on Saturday night where Garcia knocked Haney from pillar to post in several rounds and probably deserved a knockout victory will inevitably lead to even greater caution and sobriety in the small print these contracts include.
The extent the fight moved the needle and the money generated may off set the hesitancy of recent years and encourage more fighters to take on better challenges, but the looseness of Haney’s stipulations regarding weight in contrast to Gervonta Davis’, who boxed and beat Garcia a year ago, are unlikely to be repeated.
3 pounds. And everything changed.
BOXINGWRITER.CO.UK 
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