Ryan Garcia Fighting Oscar Duarte On December 2nd On DAZN

By Dan Ambrose: Ryan Garcia will take a confidence-builder fight on December 2nd against little-known lightweight Oscar Duarte on regular DAZN in San Antonio, Texas.

This will be Ryan’s first fight with his new trainer Derrick James, and it’ll be interesting to see if he fires him immediately after if he loses or fails to shine.

Duarte has an 11-fight winning steak since losing in 2018, albeit against obscure fighters with poor records.

In looking at some of Duarte’s fights, he’s very, very slow in hand & foot, and and should be an easy win for Ryan. Despite never having beaten anyone of note during his ten-year professional career, Duarte is ranked #10 at lightweight.

Duarte has a little bit of power, but his glacially slow hand speed will make him an easy mark for Ryan.

It’s a good idea for Ryan’s December 2nd fight not to be placed on PPV because he’s coming off a KO loss, and his opponent is a guy that most boxing fans have never heard of.

Golden Boy boss Oscar De La Hoya says Ryan’s next fight after the rebuilding match against Duarte could be a big one in early 2024.  Oscar is interested in having Ryan challenge WBO light welterweight champion Teofimo Lopez for his title in February.

If not Teo, De La Hoya has another fight, which could be for the WBA 140-lb belt against Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero if he’s still holding the title by then. Rolly is a more winnable fight for Ryan, but even that match-up would still be viewed as a long shot.

In the leaked sparring video, Ryan was getting shelled by Rolly, and it wasn’t pretty to watch. It was worse than what Tank Davis did to Ryan, as he seemed to be taking it easy on him until knocking him out with a body shot last April.

De La Hoya calls this a “proper fight” for the 25-year-old social media star Ryan Garcia, which some would argue is code talk to mean mismatch.

The 27-year-old Duarte’s only career defeat came against Adrian Estrella, a fighter who was destroyed in four rounds by Subriel Matias and in one round by Shohjahon Ergashev.

This is the first fight for the Golden Boy-promoted light welterweight contender Ryan (23-1, 10 KOs) since he was knocked out last April by Gervonta Davis.

“Here you have a guy who’s coming off eleven knockouts in a row,” Golden Boy chief honcho Oscar De La Hoya told Mike Coppinger about Ryan Garcia’s little-known opponent Oscar Duarte for his comeback fight on December 2nd on DAZN.

“There’s a guy who’s a power puncher who’s going to come forward and make Ryan fight. It’s the proper fight after a knockout loss to Gervonta.”

“I would love to talk to Bob to see what’s going on with him and Teofimo,” said De La Hoya about his interest in speaking with Top Rank boss Bob Arum about putting a fight together between WBO light welterweight champion Teofimo Lopez and Ryan Garcia for  Super Bowl weekend for February 10th, 2024.