Devin Haney – BOXINGWRITER.CO.UK

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.

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Like a pale martyr in his shirt of fire
A Life Drama (1853), Alexander Smith, Poet, 1830-1867

The pain etched across Luke Campbell’s face as he sank, first to one knee, and then to two, drew silence from those who have never experienced the agony his body was submerged in. Prizefighters and pugs watching on, winced. Phantom pangs, recreated by their memory, of an excruciating purgatory similar to that which Ryan Garcia’s whistling left hook had sentenced Campbell to.

A head shot is the more familiar path to a knockout, it draws a roar, an exultation from the gathered as the victim’s eyes roll, their legs fixed or shapeless at the moment of impact. Body shots are a seemingly clandestine conclusion, darker and a more gratuitous coup de grace the pain of which only boxing’s Templar can truly understand.

In landing the shot that inflicted this exclusive hell on the fallen Englishman, Ryan Garcia secured the statement victory his resume needed and substantiated much of the promise he is swathed in.

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