Ryan Garcia Targets Mario Barrios For WBC Welterweight Title

Ryan Garcia says he wants to fight WBC welterweight champion Mario Barrios next. Garcia (24-2, 20 KOs) says he’s going to “go for it.”

Barrios: The Money Fight

Garcia states that he’d tell Barrios that if he wants to “make money,” he’ll fight him. With Ryan’s large following on Instagram and X, Barrios’ promoters at Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) will likely jump at the chance to fight him.

Mario’s not going to make the kind of money he can get fighting Kingry against anyone else at the moment. The way Barrios looked in his last two fights against 46-year-old Manny Pacquiao and journeyman Abel Ramos, he’ll likely lose his title soon against almost anyone.

Ryan states that if he wins the WBC title from Barrios, he’ll use it as “leverage” to set up a unification fight against the winner of the Manny Pacquiao vs. Rolly Romero fight.

“I have not said this publicly, but I want Mario Barrios. I’m going to go for it,” said Ryan Garcia to The Warroom on Showbizz’s YouTube channel, naming WBC welterweight champion Mario Barrios as the opponent he wants to fight next.

Pacquiao–Rolly Leverage Plan

Ryan obviously knows that fighting Barrios is his best chance of winning a world title. If he fights WBO champion Brian Norman Jr, it likely won’t end well for him. He hits too hard.

“I’m going to go for it. If you want to make some good money, let’s go run it. I can leverage to, ‘Alright, Rolly, I got that,’ or Manny [Pacquiao]. If Manny beats him, then I got to fight him. I only know how this [money] works,” said Garcia.

There would be a fan backlash if Garcia is given a title shot against Barrios (29-2-2, 18 KOs) because he’s coming off a 12-round unanimous decision loss to Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero earlier this year on May 2 in a failed attempt to capture the vacant WBA welterweight title.

Boxing Is Still a Business

Ryan doesn’t deserve a world title shot, but neither did Pacquiao, and he still got one against Barrios. It would just confirm that boxing is a business. In Barrios’ case, he’s so flawed that he almost has to take the fight against Ryan if he can get it because he’s not going to hold onto his WBC title for much longer.

Written by Ken Woods, Ringside Boxing Analyst covering world title fights since 2018.