Ryan Garcia looks set to take part in one of the fights of the year as negotiations for a fight between himself and Gervonta Davis are finalised.
Despite the positive announcements, Garcia has accused ‘Tank’s’ team of ‘messing with him’ in the build-up to the fight, but reassured fans that he is unaffected by any mind games.
‘KingRy’ has had public mental health problems over the last couple of years and Davis’ team have continued to question whether or not he has the mentality to compete at the elite level of the sport.
Furthermore, ‘Tank’ accused Garcia of taking steroids in a recent clip after Garcia cancelled his interim fight.
In an interview with The MMA Hour, Garcia told Ariel Helwani that he believed Davis’ team were giving him reasons to walk away from the fight.
“After my fight with [Javier] Fortuna, they were questioning whether the fight would happen, and I said if there is a will there is a way and I wanted to be a man of my word.
I refused to let the fight go by, even though I had outs and I had ways to say that they are messing with me too much, which you could make an argument that they were.
But guess what? I said to myself that I am willing to make every sacrifice that I have to do, to make this fight happen and I’m going to do it and I’m going to win.”
“I just think that they were trying to give me ways to say ‘f*** this, I am not going through all this’, especially with the weight and the changing of dates, trying to prolong my inactivity.
All this stuff is just a game, saying that I am on steroids, I see all the tricks. They don’t know who they are messing with, my mentality is strong, whether they believe it or not.”
The lack of a tune-up fight for Garcia means that he will have been inactive for nine months ahead of the fight date of April 15th.
Meanwhile, ‘Tank’ secured a twenty-sixth knockout in his twenty-eight wins as he stopped Hector Luis Garcia on January 7.