Ryan Garcia: Eddie Hearn Wants Me to Knock Conor Benn Out
Ryan Garcia said Eddie Hearn wants him to knock Conor Benn out, and he said it with a grin two days before their WBC welterweight title fight. The champion did not treat the former promoter’s public pick as a secret.
“I think Eddie wants me to knock him the f*ck out!” Garcia said in a fight-week interview. He was smiling when he said it, as if the line had been sitting there waiting for someone to ask.
Garcia (25-2, 20 KOs) defends the belt he took from Mario Barrios in February when the pair meet Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Benn (25-1, 14 KOs) is in the first world title fight of his career, cut back to 147 pounds after middleweight wars with Chris Eubank Jr. and a catchweight win over Regis Prograis.
Hearn no longer promotes Benn. He still talks about him. The Matchroom boss has said he wants Benn to win because Benn is a Brit, then added that he does not think Benn does, not at welterweight, and that a stoppage is the likely scenario. Garcia heard that forecast and gave it a sharper edge.
The champion has spent years treating Hearn’s roster like unfinished business. He stopped Luke Campbell in 2021 and dropped Devin Haney three times in 2024 before that result was changed to a no-contest. Benn is not Hearn’s fighter anymore. Garcia is still talking as if Saturday is another message aimed at the same man.
The same interview showed him a note from a British supporter who said they were in Garcia’s corner. He laughed, thanked them, and made a point of saying he already has a wife. “Shoot, thank you,” he said. “I don’t know, but I appreciate from the UK.”
“I have a wife, but thank you,” he added.
Asked whether British fans were picking him over Benn, Garcia did not act shocked. He pointed at Hearn. In his view, Hearn had helped turn “the public to dislike him.” Garcia said Benn “chose money” and that “people seen it.”
That is Garcia’s read of the split, not a poll of the United Kingdom. Benn left Matchroom after a public fallout and signed with Zuffa Boxing, the promotional vehicle that helped deliver this title shot. Hearn has said he was disappointed with how it played out. He has also kept picking against the man he used to sell.
Hearn has said he does not like Benn at 147 pounds, does not think Benn punches hard at that weight, and does not think Benn will have the same chin after boxing at 160 and then 150. He has still called Benn game, a live dog who will have a right go. Garcia is not interested in the polite version of that speech.
The champion has already promised the finish he thinks Hearn wants. He has said this fight will be five rounds or fewer, and he has spent fight week calling Benn a beginner who rushed a title shot he did not earn. Twenty of Garcia’s 25 wins have ended inside the distance. That power is the reason Hearn’s stoppage talk exists in the first place.
Benn has his own knockout prediction. He has said he will look for the stoppage and that their DNA is different, a shot at Garcia’s night against Gervonta Davis and the loss to Rolando Romero. He has not made a true 147-pound limit since 2022. The cut is the question Hearn keeps raising, and it is the question Garcia keeps enjoying.
Nigel Benn won world titles at middleweight and super middleweight. The son is trying to put a green belt in the family name at a weight Hearn now says is the wrong one. Garcia is trying to keep that belt and, in his own telling, do the thing Eddie Hearn already called the likely scenario.
Friday’s weigh-in will show whether Benn can even get there without leaving his strength in the sauna. Saturday will show whether Garcia can turn Hearn’s forecast into a knockout, or whether Benn can become a world champion with his former promoter on the other side of the pick.
If Garcia is right, Hearn gets the finish he would not quite demand out loud, and the champion keeps the WBC welterweight title in Las Vegas. If Benn is right, the only man who wanted him knocked out was the one holding the microphone.