Ryan Garcia was expected to return to action in Golden Boy Promotions' initial summer slate of post-coronavirus fights, but a dispute between Garcia and his promoter is keeping the 21-year-old out of the ring for the time being.
As he waits for business matters to be sorted out, Garcia is keeping himself busy on social media.
The undefeated lightweight spoke to ESPN's Ariel Helwani on Instagram Live about his status, and along the way he teased the idea of venturing into the world of mixed martial arts for a huge payday.
As for how are things are with his promoter, "I can’t even get into (my relationship with Golden Boy's Oscar De La Hoya)," Garcia said when asked about their recent back-and-forth on Twitter. "You have to call a spade a spade. He did sound like a hater."
Garcia said he hasn't talked to De La Hoya since the incident and is focused on securing his next fight. He went so far as to suggest there are also big plans for him at the end of the year.
"Expect a huge fight," Garcia said as he continued to call out the likes of Gervonta Davis and Jorge Linares.
Although his return to boxing is on hold, Garcia is interested in facing a retired mixed martial artist after a recent tiff on Twitter.
"Henry Cejudo," Garcia told Helwani as to who he'd fight in a potential crossover into the world of MMA. "If I do it, it better be at some crazy event because it’s going to be the easiest fight I've ever had in my life."
When asked if that fight would take place as a boxing match or a mixed martial arts affair, Garcia suggested that he would entertain doing both.
"Let's do it over here (boxing) first, get you some money, get you knocked out, and then I'll go to MMA,” Garcia said. "If you don’t knock me out in MMA, (then) you’re a bum. I promise you, if you don’t submit me or do whatever you have to do, you’re trash."
Their online beef started after Garcia watched Cejudo successfully defend his UFC bantamweight championship at UFC 249. After stating he was impressed with Cejudo’s striking, he asked his Twitter followers whether the former two-division champion would give him a good boxing fight. That drew a response from Cejudo.
"The only time I've seen him was in the last fight he had," Garcia said. "I actually liked his hands and wrote him a message that he was pretty good and not to retire. I tweeted that, and he ended up going crazy. I didn’t even call you out, my guy!"
Cejudo certainly didn’t take it that way, and now Garcia says he has no choice but to finish what he started.
"Now I'm going to have to knock him out," he said. "He's a cool dude, but I have to knock him out."