Haney vs Garcia: how to lose to a party boy

Pulling no punches in this one.

This weekend I watched Devin Haney vs Ryan Garcia. It was one of the silliest fights I have ever seen. Devin Haney closed as a -800 favorite, making it one of the biggest upsets we’re likely to see all year.

In one sense Devin Haney’s task was very simple. His opponent was fast and powerful and… that’s about it. Garcia has poor defense, unimaginative footwork, and no real idea of how to control a fight. He was thoroughly outclassed and knocked out in his previous fight. And he had spent the days leading up to last weekend being publically drunk and going publically insane. 

In another, realer sense, the task proved to be insurmountably difficult. In order to beat Garcia, Haney needed to keep the pressure on for twelve rounds. He needed to punish Garcia’s powerful punches with decisive counters. He needed to work diligently to draw out Garcia’s sloppy defense, then find the angles from which to break him. Haney should have taken his cues from the second fight between Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev, in which the smaller, more technical fighter went after his fearsome foe like he owed him money. Garcia appeared to have lost his mind, and Haney really needed—at least a little—to match that energy. 

He proved incapable of doing so. 

I respect any professional fighter who puts their pride and their health on the line to compete at the highest level. All the same, it’s hard not to say that Haney’s performance last weekend was embarrassing. In this piece, I will be giving Garcia credit for the things he did to win—but more than that, I will be focusing on the myriad ways Devin Haney found of shitting a bed made up just for him.

Inauspicious start

Damn near everyone expected Devin Haney to school Ryan Garcia. It wasn’t just that Garcia appeared to be having a very serious mental breakdown en route to fight night. Haney was simply the better operator. Where Garcia’s fights are often chaotic and messy, Haney tends to put the lid on his opponents before slowly, methodically building his attack. It seemed certain that he would spend the first few rounds containing Garcia, after which he would (hopefully) build his initiative and ultimately take Ryan apart at the joints.

Then the fight started. Less than a minute in, this happened.

It was at this moment that I realized just how much Haney had been insulated by his reach down at lightweight. The last man Haney fought who was both taller than him and longer of arm was Alfredo Santiago, in 2019. Santiago had just 12 pro fights under his belt, compared to Haney’s 23, but the fight indeed proved difficult for Haney, who found himself repeatedly countered and stuck on the end of Santiago’s jab.

In this instance, Haney gets caught committing three distinct errors—the kind he usually gets away with. First, he throws his jab with a “bow and arrow” motion, yanking his right hand back as he extends the left. This leaves his chin exposed to the left hook that comes whipping around the side. Second, and more importantly, he overextends, throwing all his weight onto the front foot and leaning forward to gain a few extra inches of reach. His back foot very nearly leaves the ground. This leaves him without a base, essentially removing the shocks that ought to help him absorb such a counter.

Third, and most importantly of all, Haney does not fire his jab from a good angle. Garcia does not, in fact, have longer arms than Haney. He is a little taller, but at most this means he more or less has parity of reach with Devin. How, then, is Garcia able to meet a jab—the longest punch in any boxer’s arsenal—with a hook? Haney’s positioning is to blame. Take a look at Haney’s feet as he fires the jab. He ought to be looking down the barrel at Garcia’s center-line, having pivoted to his left in order to circumvent the threat of Garcia’s own lead hand. But he isn’t. Instead, he’s looking at Garcia almost side-on, and tries to reach past Garcia’s left shoulder with his jab.

In fact, it is Garcia who creates a bit of an angle prior to the exchange. See how he advances his left foot on a diagonal to open up his left hook. This appears to be what Haney is trying to punish, as Garcia opens himself up with the movement. But this is what I call a “weak” angle: Haney’s lead foot is past that of Garcia, but he is not properly facing him. The result is that Garcia’s hook literally blindsides him, with tremendous effect thanks to the fact that Haney has overreached to find a target that wasn’t really available in the first place.

Caught in the middle

Haney regained control after that. Or, rather, Garcia let him have it. In fact, that was kind of the story of this fight: two fighters competing to see who could let the opponent get away with more mistakes. Even before the end of round one, Garcia started skipping around the perimeter of the ring, relying on the lackluster footwork that had so many people picking Haney to win. Devin started hunting him with the jab, finding openings for his left hook and overhand right. By round four, Haney was feinting, drawing big reactions out of Garcia and making him miss on the counter. It looked as if the fight had settled into the rhythm most expected.

But Haney took his foot off the gas. Incredibly, Garcia’s passive footwork, which never put him in position to fence Haney off, seemed to be working. Haney wasn’t getting altogether easy openings for his punches, and never managed to put together more than two at a time. By the end of round five, his pace had slackened. He was still pushing Garcia around the ring, but he spent more time adjusting his feet to cut Garcia off than he did threatening with his hands.

Garcia came out in round six and went ballistic for a solid thirty seconds, unleashing wild, fast combinations one after the other. Haney did what he always does in the face of such furious offense: he tried to clinch.

And sequences such as this one started to occur.

You can see how hesitant Haney is in this exchange. He starts with a jab very similar to the one that got punished in our last example. Garcia’s response is not so sharp this time. He sticks out his lead hand, leans away, and takes a bounding step straight back. Haney might have challenged this by, for example, doubling (or even tripling) up on his jab, sliding around Garcia’s empty lead hand in the process. Instead, wary of counters much like the one that hurt him in round one, he meets timidity with timidity, apprehensively ducking under a punch that never comes and trying to rush straight at Garcia from the resulting crouch.

If there is one thing you should not do to a guy moving straight back, it is to chase directly after him. This might result in some initiative in an MMA fight, but against a boxer, even one as haphazardly put together as Ryan Garcia, it’s a good way to get your shit rocked. By trying to rush to safety instead of continuing to build on the success of his jab, Haney gives Garcia all the time he needs to bring his left hand back and fire the very hook he was so worried about in the first place.

That hook lands—not very cleanly or with much power—but it thwarts Haney’s advance, and forces him back to long range. That’s a tempo for Ryan Garcia. He doesn’t waste it. Immediately he starts testing Haney with jab feints, and Haney immediately bites; not with a counter punch, not with a change of angle, but by ducking down and attempting to rush forward into the clinch… again.

Ultimately, Haney gets stuck in no-man’s land: directly in front of Ryan Garcia, offering no threats of his own, fighting desperately just to stay on top of all the offense coming back at him. His footwork is nonexistent; he moves straight forward, and stops when he gets hit. Meanwhile, he manages to make Ryan Garcia’s simple retreating footwork look downright brilliant. All Garcia has to do is adjust his feet backwards as he throws hooks and right hands, and the impotent Haney can’t do anything but try to defend a surrounded position. Finally Haney decides that maybe getting far away would be safer than continuing to chase the clinch. He backs off.

Then this happens.

So, uh, remember that thing I said about not chasing straight after your opponent? Well, maybe it’s best I condition that statement.

Haney is very clearly not in a position to fire off any punishing counters when Garcia gives chase. While you can’t see his feet from this camera angle (thanks producers, for always making my life difficult), it is clear that he only pivots initially because he feels the ropes at his back. And Haney never really completes that pivot, instead ending up both quite square and quite close to Garcia. He tries, in a show of nonchalance, to bounce his way back to a safer angle, but that simply tells Garcia that his feet are not set to throw back.

Most importantly, however, is the fact that Garcia buys himself some time. Before committing himself to the charge, he snaps Haney’s head back with a stiff jab. Haney goes from inactive to reactive, and Garcia gets the clear to hunt him down.

Garcia is absolutely wide open to counters here. His chin is way up in the air, he doesn’t move his head as he punches, and he shifts from one stance to the other mid-combination. But in context these are hardly mistakes. Haney is unbalanced, standing up too tall to generate any leverage going backwards. Both of his hands are committed to swatting at punches, none of which he can see because he keeps flinching and closing his eyes. Garcia’s form might have been a problem had Haney been prepared to counter him, but he isn’t and doesn’t. He’s too worried about what’s coming at him to try anything.

Basically, you can break every rule in the book so long as you are the one leading the dance.

Waiting to die

While he did periodically get back on the pressure which was the foundation of his gameplan, Haney never built anything on top of it. He continued to give away the initiative and stand around in front of his opponent, apparently in the misguided belief that he would be able to stay ahead of Garcia with his defense.

Take this for example: the first knockdown, and the moments leading up to it.

The sequence starts with Haney standing directly in front of Ryan Garcia, who fires off a one-two. Haney takes care of both punches, though it requires him to shell up with both hands, then exits on an angle as Garcia looks for an uppercut. Haney does not do anything with the angle, however. The result of all that defensive hooplah, then, is that he finds himself once again standing directly in front of Ryan Garcia, who simply feints, and then fires off another one-two. Haney once again defends the punches, and once again resets on an angle from which—you guessed it—he waits on Ryan Garcia to go again.

Ryan Garcia may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he is more than capable of hitting a heavy bag. Likewise, he is capable of finding openings on an opponent who is giving him nothing to think about other than which punches to throw next. And so, given three free tries, Garcia comes up with a bright idea: another jab… followed by something other than a right hand. Brilliant!

Seriously though, it is a sweet set-up from Garcia. He doesn’t simply replace the two with the three. He actually throws an empty beat right into the middle of the combination: after popping Haney with the jab, he does not opt for a quick, low-powered left hook, but rather steps in and loads up on the punch. It may look like a telegraph, but for Haney, who has now been conditioned to expect the one-two over and over again, it is immensely confusing. In the slow motion replay, you can actually see Haney staring bemusedly at Garcia’s unmoving right hand, preparing to slip it, right up until the moment Garcia’s left collides with his jaw.

But that’s the thing. It isn’t just that Ryan Garcia puts his punches together—it’s that Haney lets him do it. Boxing, like pretty much any adverserial, one-on-one contest, is a zero-sum game. One person’s loss is the other’s gain. This applies to factors like mobility, stamina, durability, punching power, etc. It also applies to time. If I take an action that compels you to react, then I have gained time; time in which I can take another action, gaining more time, and so on. The gaining and exploitation of time, or tempi, is a concept readily taught in sports like fencing and chess, but rarely espoused in the realm of combat sports.

Clearly, it is a lesson from which Devin Haney might benefit. Throughout this fight, Haney lost sight of the fact that, in boxing, there is no such thing as a safe position. A fighter must make constant adjustments and—crucially—at least some of those adjustments must carry some threat. Otherwise, what’s to stop the opponent doing what Ryan Garcia did here, and simply trying different combinations until one of them works?

Defense is rewarding, but defensiveness gets punished.

Stuck in the mud

I mentioned earlier that this fight was characterized by both athletes letting one another get away with mistakes. Perhaps the most frustrating pattern of all was Haney’s total inability to take advantage of the many, many opportunities Ryan Garcia gave him to unload with meaningful combinations.

Throughout the fight, Garcia adopted what the commentators called a shoulder roll, but which would be more accurately described as a shoulder fetal position. An example of that “technique” below.

Now, hiding your chin behind the lead shoulder is very much a viable defensive technique. Less viable is looking down at the floor and literally turning your back on the opponent, which is precisely what Garcia does here (and at many, many other points in the fight).

In this instance, Haney comes up with a good idea: since Garcia is exposing his ribs, Haney simply hammers away at them with his right hand. Whenever Haney did this, Garcia had no answer but to complain to the referee that Haney was hitting him in the back—as though Haney weren’t hitting him directly on the short ribs (he was) and turning one’s back to the opponent is not in itself a foul (it is).

Unfortunately, what you see in this clip is more or less the summation of Haney’s response to this ludicrously vulnerable defense. He fails to come up with anything other than the same right hand to the ribs over and over again, but hey—if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. After landing five of these uncontested shots in a row, however, what does Haney do? Does he keep going? Does he change angles in hopes of finding another opening? Does he reset to range, perhaps to wait for Garcia to pop out of his shell before piling on again?

Nope!

Instead, he clinches. As if mentally exhausted by the task of throwing the same punch five times in a row, Haney places both arms gently around Ryan Garcia’s waist and waits for the referee to step in. Hilariously, this concession actually prompts Garcia to jump back out of his hole and sling a right hook at Haney, who is so surprised that he hunches over and tries desperately to smother Garcia’s punches with yet another clinch. This leads to a sequence very similar to the one we looked at in the second section, with Haney trying desperately to get under Garcia’s punches and rush into a clinch while Garcia uses simple footwork to keep the space open, shelling Haney while he wanders around in no-man’s land.

Aside from whatever mental weaknesses made Haney look for a timeout in such a dominant position, there are tangible, technical problems at play here. The biggest culprit is Haney’s footwork, which proved shockingly bare in close range. He throws all of his weight onto his front foot with the jab that sends Garcia down into his ramshackle bunker, and it pretty much stays there after that. Yes, Haney brings the right foot forward after entering the pocket, but it stays stuck out behind him all the while, more of a starting block than a stable platform from which to throw powerful punches. As a result, Haney’s right hands lack the power that comes from weight transfer, and his left foot remains stuck in the mud, making it very difficult for him to change angles despite the fact that his opponent is not even looking at him.

The best example of this technical shortcoming came in the 10th round. Take a look.

Once again, this camera angle does not afford us a clear look at the fighters’ feet… but maybe that’s for the best. Nothing good is happening below frame, I can assure you.

Haney initiates with a jab, just as in the previous example, and Garcia once again takes a sudden interest in the floor. This time Haney does throw something other than a right hand to the ribs: a short left hook. But he smothers himself in the process. Even without the benefit of a wider angle, you can see just how much Haney commits his weight to that lead foot. The left hook he throws should carry his weight back onto the rear foot, which would not only enable a hard right hand but create the space needed for further punches. But it doesn’t. Haney’s left foot is stuck in the mud, and he ends up standing right beside an opponent with (I cannot emphasize this enough) his back literally turned, incapable of changing position or following up with any other offense.

In the end, Ryan Garcia picked up a close majority decision, his three knockdowns balanced against a point deduction (for hitting after the break) and several rounds of almost total inactivity.

Even had the scorecards gone against him, however, Devin Haney should have left the arena feeling like a loser. Because the pundits and the oddsmakers were not really wrong about this fight: it was Devin Haney’s to lose. So much of Ryan Garcia’s success was, in the end, the result of Haney’s own terrible decision making, with a few bits of as-yet unexploited bad technique thrown in. And a healthy dose of shame could be the motivation Haney needs to never throw away a fight like that ever again.

The day after the event, a video popped up online showing Haney at dinner with friends and family, who chant, “And still! And still!” in celebration of the fact that he hadn’t lost his belt (Garcia missed weight). Haney has beaten better fighters than Ryan Garcia. At just 25 years old, he should have years yet to continue refining his game. But this was a horrible loss, and I for one hope it was someone in his camp who bought that cake for him, to cheer him up. Because if that was Devin’s idea then he’s not nearly embarrassed enough.