{"id":757298,"date":"2026-09-02T02:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T02:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/757298\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T02:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T02:52:09","slug":"james-toney-compares-ryan-garcia-to-the-greatest-mexican-fighter-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/757298\/","title":{"rendered":"James Toney compares Ryan Garcia to &#8216;the greatest Mexican fighter ever&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnewsonline.net\/boxer\/ryan-garcia\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ryan Garcia<\/a> is set to defend his WBC welterweight title against Conor Benn next weekend, and ahead of that bout, fan-favourite three-division world champion James Toney has compared the Californian superstar to one Mexican legend.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Garcia had been scheduled to challenge for two world titles prior to his world title win, first missing the opportunity to win a belt by missing weight ahead of a shot at Devin Haney\u2019s WBC super-lightweight crown, before losing to Rolando Romero in a quest for the WBA welterweight throne last year.<\/p>\n<p>However, back in February, it proved to be third time lucky for \u2018King Ry\u2019 as he dominated Mario Barrios to get his hands on the WBC welterweight marble via unanimous-decision.<\/p>\n<p>For his first defence, Garcia will face Benn, who was installed as the WBC mandatory challenger despite not fighting at 147lbs since April 2022 \u2013 and <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnewsonline.net\/news\/benn-weight-decision-ahead-of-garcia\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">looks to be struggling with the weight cut<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Speaking ahead of the fight, Toney told <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/tAnW3ahhJiY?si=koHlsVBA-uNwIfCG\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ESNews<\/a> that Garcia reminds him of Salvador Sanchez, who was tipped by many to be one of boxing\u2019s best ever fighters until a tragic and fatal car crash at the age of just 23 years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[Garcia reminds me of] Salvador Sanchez,<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSalvador Sanchez is the greatest Mexican fighter ever. Period. Not Canelo, Canelo is a great fighter but come on, dog. Look what Salvador Sanchez did in such a short amount of time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sanchez held the WBC featherweight title from 1980 until his sad death in 1982, with his final record reading 44 wins from 46 fights, 32 of those wins by knockout.<\/p>\n<p>As for Garcia\u2019s upcoming fight with Benn, \u2018Lights Out\u2019 Toney then went on to predict a statement victory for Garcia, believing that his fellow American will defeat Benn inside the first five rounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRyan is a talent, man. I am serious. He is different, it [Benn] is going to be easy work for him. Five rounds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/boxing\/story\/_\/id\/49397710\/ryan-garcia-conor-benn-boxing-pulled-apart-fiery-confrontation-ko-promises-made-zuffa-golden-boy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Garcia-Benn takes place on Saturday, September 12<\/a>, with Jai Opetaia scheduled to take on reigning WBC cruiserweight world champion Noel Mikaelian in the co-main event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Garcia is set to defend his WBC welterweight title against Conor Benn next weekend, and ahead of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-757298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}