Why did Ryan Garcia start boxing? All about 'KingRy's' career history

Ryan Garcia is one of the highly touted prospects who have the promise to become boxing's next big thing. The 25-year-old dominated the amateur boxing space before turning pro and now stands at the doors of becoming a boxing world champion.

Garcia took his first steps in boxing at a very young age and as a result, he had a head start over many of his peers in the sport. However, many factors led to him taking up boxing as a serious career choice and forged him into a world-class boxer.

Why did Ryan Garcia start boxing?

Ryan Garcia comes from a family that produced several generations of boxers. His father, Henry Garcia, is a boxing coach, who also happens to be the 25-year-old's head coach even today.

Additionally, all of Garcia's siblings started training in boxing early in life. As a result, it was natural for him to get inclined to take up boxing.

However, many factors contributed to him becoming one of the most prominent boxers of his family in the following years.

Garcia started training when he was seven. The 2008 global recession changed the course of his family's future. Young Ryan's father, Henry, moved to Victorville due to financial issues.

During this time, Henry Garcia decided to invest his money in turning Ryan into a world-class boxer. In his appearance on Patrick bet-David's podcast, 'King Ryan' said that one of his uncles, who competed at a national level in amateur boxing, helped his father make this decision:

"My uncle goes, one of the kids in our family is going to be the [champion]. When he was over there at the Nationals, he goes, 'Somebody in our family is going to come back here and somebody's going to win and somebody's going to take this to a whole another level.' When he sees me, he's like, 'That's the one.'"

Catch Ryan Garcia's comments below [0:05]:

Garcia also claims to be skilled at basketball but he never got the opportunity to pursue the sport seriously.

His uncle's prophecy came true as Garcia went on to become a 15-time National amateur champion and amassed a solid 215-15 record in amateur boxing. He turned pro in 2016 and became one of the most promising stars of his generation.

As a professional boxer, Garcia holds a 24-1 record with a staggering 20 knockouts to his credit. He also won the WBC interim lightweight title as well as the WBO-NABO and WBC sliver lightweight titles.

Garcia suffered the first loss of his professional boxing career in April 2023 when he lost to Gervonta 'Tank' Davis via seventh-round knockout. However, he bounced back with a solid win over Oscar Duarte in the next outing.

Garcia is now set to fight Devin Haney for the WBC super lightweight title on April 20, which is one of the most consequential boxing matches of the current era.

Despite getting started in boxing at an early age, Ryan Garcia rarely got into fights outside the ring

Continuing further in the aforementioned episode of the podcast, Ryan Garcia said that although he was surrounded by problematic children while growing up, he never had the appetite for violence in a street fight scenario.

Garcia explained:

"I never socked soebody in the face in the street fight. I always slapped them. I'm always scared to fight in the streets. I used to be terrified. When I was a kid, I could fight in the ring but in the street, I would curl up into a ball because I didn't know what that was. Like it's not coordinated. I'm used to coordination, protocol and structure." [2:38]

Garcia further explained that got into street fights three times in his teenage years and that was only when he needed to protect himself.