{"id":962297,"date":"2026-11-12T22:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-12T22:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/962297\/"},"modified":"2026-11-12T22:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T22:36:09","slug":"ryan-garcias-undisputed-fight-plan-suffers-major-blow-after-wba-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/962297\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Garcia’s undisputed fight plan suffers major blow after WBA ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ryan Garcia had mapped out a string of major fights to build on an impressive 2026, culminating in becoming undisputed welterweight world champion.<\/p>\n

To repeat the feat that Terence Crawford achieved in 2023 with his win over Errol Spence Jr., Garcia must collect the IBF, WBA and WBO belts.<\/p>\n

The 28-year-old won the WBC title earlier this year by beating Mario Barrios, and marked his first defence with a second-round stoppage against Conor Benn.<\/p>\n

Given his tense rivalry with WBO champion Devin Haney, Garcia sees that fight as the last piece of the puzzle. Haney has a unification bout set against the IBF\u2019s Liam Paro on December 19.<\/p>\n

To set up a four-belt clash, Garcia had entered early talks with WBA champion Teofimo Lopez, with a February date in mind before the winner faced the winner of Haney-Paro in the summer.<\/p>\n

Those plans have been at the very least set back, as the WBA has confirmed that regular champion Jack Catterall is due his mandatory shot at Lopez next.<\/p>\n

Lopez\u2019s team recently lodged a petition for the WBA to reconsider the mandatory order, though the sanctioning body says the \u201cteam had not submitted a formal request for special permission to pursue a unification bout\u201d and therefore reaffirmed Catterall\u2019s position.<\/a><\/p>\n

The champion \u2013 who won the belt from Rolando Romero \u2013 now has ten days to strike a deal with Catterall before purse bids are called.<\/p>\n

Garcia will likely push ahead with his fight at the beginning of 2027, having already missed out on a desired December date to keep active. He recently claimed that he will be fighting Floyd Mayweather,<\/a> though many fans will remain sceptical given Mayweather\u2019s recent form of announcing fights and not following through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Garcia had mapped out a string of major fights to build on an impressive 2026, culminating in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":962298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-962297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=962297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/962298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=962297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=962297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=962297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}