Ryan Garcia blames his former trainer Joe Goossen for “leaks” from their training camp in the build-up to his defeat by Gervonta “Tank” Davis.
Garcia lost for the first time when in April he was stopped by Davis, and on Saturday fights for the first time since then, at the Toyota Center in Houston against Oscar Duarte Jurado.
The 25 year old will be fighting for the first time since recruiting Derrick James to be his trainer, and also for the first time since returning to 140lbs.
In the days before his 136lbs catchweight fight with Davis at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena, those around Davis taunted Garcia about “spies” in their camp. The experienced Goossen dismissed the possibility of their existence, but as Garcia prepared for the 27-year-old Duarte, from Mexico, he said of his time under the hall-of-fame trainer: “There was a lot of problems. A lot of things leaked in camp.
“My rib injury leaked in camp – how did that happen? There was three people in the gym. That pissed me off.
“How’s he not closing up the gym? I go in there and there’s little kids out there training when I’m about to start training. ‘What is this? This is dumb.’ There were little things here and there that kinda pissed me off. In a camp, nothing should be getting leaked at all. We’re professionals.”
Davis’ career was long guided by Floyd Mayweather, a long-term rival of Oscar De La Hoya, whose organisation Golden Boy remains Garcia’s promoter despite the tension and legal action that exists between them.
“[Floyd] Mayweather told me – we started chatting it up; started hanging out a little bit [in Vegas, Miami and Hawaii] – he told me some things he did to get that information and I was like, ‘Wow, okay’,” Garcia said. “I’m not going to elaborate on that, but it was kind of mind-blowing.. ‘Wow, that’s some bullshit.’
“We were talking business, and things like that – Mayweather don’t party.”
