Ryan Garcia Without Doping “Is Not Fast, Not Strong, Not Good,” Says Former Champ

Ryan Garcia drew plenty of ire and fire with his insane social media behavior leading up to his bout with Devin Haney. He then made an irresistible target of himself when he tested positive for the banned substance ostarine in testing conducted before that contest.

A signature career win changed to a no contest by the New York State Athletic Commission, a fine, and a one-year suspension were not going to be enough to wash the stain from Garcia’s reputation– especially a Garcia who has become a disagreeable and sometimes flat-out repugnant character. Fair or not, everything the young fighter does from this point forward will be doubted and everything he accomplished in the past will be questioned.

Former two-division world champ Paulie Malignaggi, who is now an analyst for ProBox TV, showcased the kind of suspicion that will be dogging Garcia until some amends are made.

“Ryan Garcia not doping is not fast, he’s not strong, he’s not conditioned, he’s not even good,” Malignaggi said during a video segment. “I have been suspicious of Garcia doping since, probably, the Duno fight…I saw that knockout and it just – I wouldn’t say, ‘Ah, this guy’s definitely doping’ because you can never really just say that– but there was a certain kind of power surge, all of a sudden, in Ryan Garcia’s career and it was drastic.

“It wasn’t like ‘he was kinda strong.’ He was getting stoppages. But the Duno fight, where he hit a durable guy and you barely hit him on the top of the head and his one leg went one way and one leg went the other way and he’s knocked down in the first round. I was like, ‘this guy was never hitting like that .’”

And, yeah, it does raise some red flags when someone is beating better (and bigger) fighters in more devastating fashion, seemingly, all of a sudden.

Prior to the Romero Duno fight in 2019, Garcia was 18-0 with 15 KOs. His hand speed was clearly evident and he did score some impressive KOs, but not all that many were of the one-punch variety. In 2018, he even went the 10-round distance with Jayson Velez and Carlos Morales in back-to-back fights.

Then, his power exploded. And it IS worth noting that it exploded without any noticeable or significant improvements in technique or strategy.

But how can anyone prove anything in a sport that really and truly doesn’t want to know the truth about anything, much less about the sordid state of “clean” boxing efforts?

Honestly, when it comes to performance enhancing drugs in boxing, there’s no way to know who’s clean and who isn’t. Commission testing is incomplete and insufficient. Voluntary testing is just that– voluntary– and is tailor made to the whims and interests of the promotion to such an extent that it’s little more than a way to get around actual PEDs testing.

Ryan Garcia has become the poster boy for the sport’s anti-doping failures and, undoubtedly, will be catching flak for a long time, if not forever.