Ryan Garcia Says Shakur Stevenson Is Hard to Negotiate With
Ryan Garcia and Shakur Stevenson sat next to each other on the RING broadcast after Garcia’s second-round stoppage of Conor Benn and immediately turned the conversation toward a fight that still has no date. Garcia opened with the line that now frames the whole exchange.
“This man’s hard to negotiate with,” Garcia said.
He did not follow it with a cheap shot. Garcia called Stevenson smart, said he knows what he is doing in the ring, and credited the people around him before circling back to the same old problem of getting a deal done.
“He has a lot of great mentors,” Garcia said. “So, you know, I don’t really knock him for it. You know, all my sh*t talkin’ is, you know me, I’m always gonna get to it.”
Then he made the offer that boxing has been waiting on for years.
“If we could rumble one day, we should do it,” Garcia said. “I think that the boxing world would love to see it. It’s a great matchup. He was one of the best in amateurs, I was one of the best in amateurs, it only makes sense.”
Stevenson did not duck the idea. He called it a tremendous matchup, praised Garcia’s night against Benn, and then made it clear the real talk would happen once the cameras were off.
“I thought you did an amazing job tonight,” Stevenson said. “I commend you on your performance. I’m gonna get at you some about once we get off the air. But right now that we on the air, I thought you did good.”
That is as close as either man has come to a public handshake. It is also not a signed fight. Garcia is the WBC welterweight champion at 26-2 with 21 knockouts after stopping Benn on September 12 in Las Vegas. Stevenson is 25-0 with 11 knockouts and a four-division world champion after taking the WBO and The Ring junior welterweight titles from Teofimo Lopez by unanimous decision on January 31. One man lives at 147. The other still holds 140. The gap is the entire negotiation.
Garcia has spent the week calling out names at welterweight and above. Stevenson has spent the year as one of Zuffa Boxing’s biggest signings after joining the promotion in July, and he now sits inside a WBO window that could force a mandatory defense before any superfight gets room. Those two calendars do not line up on their own.
The amateur piece is the part both men actually agree on. Stevenson won Olympic silver at bantamweight in Rio in 2016. Garcia was one of the most decorated U.S. amateurs of his generation before turning pro. That history is why Garcia said the matchup “only makes sense.” It is also why Stevenson did not laugh it off.
What Garcia did not do was pretend the talks have been easy. “Hard to negotiate with” is not a compliment in this sport. It is an admission that Stevenson’s camp has not given him the number, the date, or the weight he wants. Garcia still left the door open. He said he does not knock Stevenson for playing it that way. He just wants the rumble if the two sides can ever get there.
Stevenson’s answer stayed polite on air and pointed off it. Commending the Benn performance costs him nothing. Getting at Garcia once they leave the set is the part that matters. If that conversation is about 147, Garcia already has his home. If it is about 140, Garcia would have to come down after just defending the WBC belt. Neither man said which number they would accept.
For now the story is two undefeated-era stars sitting on the same desk and talking like the fight is inevitable while both of them know the paperwork is not. Garcia wants the boxing world to see it. Stevenson says it would be tremendous. The next step is the one they said they would take after the broadcast ended. Until that talk produces a weight and a date, Ryan Garcia versus Shakur Stevenson remains the matchup everyone can picture and nobody can book.