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Ryan Garcia made a swift change to his budding boxing career on Feb. 11 when he split from heralded coach Eddy Reynoso and named the equally respected Joe Goossen as new head trainer.
Garcia’s father and lifelong coach Henry will still remain in the picture as a co-trainer.
After originally shocking the boxing public by releasing a statement announcing the switch, Garcia opened up about the situation in more detail, saying that he was two weeks into training camp for his upcoming fight against Emmanuel Tagoe and still hadn’t seen Reynoso, so he decided to make the switch.
“Eddy didn’t have the time to work 100%. He’s a very busy trainer, and I understand,” Garcia told ESNews. “Sometimes you have to make your change for the better. It’s nothing against him. He’s a good trainer. I won five fights with him by knockout, so there’s nothing wrong. I’m going to another level, and I need a full-on, 100% [trainer]. It was never bad blood. It was about dedication and time, you know?”
Garcia also opened up about his first week of training with Goossen.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “Joe is a very dedicated trainer 24/7, watching all my mistakes if I make any and correcting them. He’s on top of them at all times. He doesn’t just see my talent because a lot of people would be just like, ‘damn, he’s so quick, he’s so fast.’ But Joe, he has it down to what I need to work on. I’m always open-eared and here to listen. You know me. I’m dedicated and always ready to go. I train from pretty much from six o’clock [a.m.] to nine o’clock at night every day. It’s more than a nine to five. It’s six to nine.”
The 23-year-old Garcia (21-0, 18 KOs) will remain based in San Diego, the location of which Reynoso trained arguably the sport’s strongest stable. It featured Canelo Alvarez and the likes of Andy Ruiz Jr., Oscar Valdez, and Frank Sanchez, among others.
Garcia is in the midst of preparing for a comeback fight following a break battling mental health issues and right-hand surgery against Tagoe in San Antonio on April 9.
Before the break-up, Reynoso’s spring schedule was filling up with big-time fights. Valdez is set to face Shakur Stevenson in a junior lightweight unification bout on April 30 in Las Vegas, and Alvarez has his sights set on fighting May 7 against an opponent still to be determined.
Garcia’s camp and fight week would ultimately overlap with Valdez and Alvarez’s training schedules and certainly create scheduling conflicts for Reynoso.
Henry Garcia told BoxingScene.com that in addition to the lack of time Reynoso was able to commit, his son wanted to strike out on his own because he wanted independence, his own gym, and to build a better brand.
“Ryan decided that it was time for him to have his own gym, where he’s not confined to a certain schedule and a certain day. It’s like, ‘hey, we have a fight coming up’ you know. He wanted to build his own brand and make it bigger,” said Garica.
“I think it’s time. It’s like when you have an apartment – you get tired of renting and you want your own place. It’s almost like that. The main thing is that Ryan did not want to feel that he was, you know, in somebody else’s, you know, he felt that his brand can hold up, just like Floyd Mayweather Jr. when Mayweather decided to move away from Top Rank and start his own thing. It’s almost the same thing. He just didn’t want to feel confined to one area where you have to wait until they decide to work out and this and that. We don’t want that. We want to have our own place, and what’s wrong with that?
“Ryan is becoming a strong man and making his own decisions. That’s the bottom line, and we have to respect that. He’s not a kid anymore. He wants to make his own decisions, and it’s not a bad decision. We’re still in contact with everybody [at Team Canelo].
“We have love for Canelo, Eddy, and the team,” said Henry. “They are beautiful and awesome people. I can’t emphasize that enough. We respect them and there are no hard feelings at all. We thank them for all of their assistance and are appreciative for everything they’ve done, but I guess when you know we have to make some changes, that’s something that’s decided.”
Manouk Akopyan is a sports journalist, writer and broadcast reporter. He’s also a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and MMA Journalists Association. He can be reached on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube at @ManoukAkopyan, via email at manouk[dot]akopyan[at]gmail.com or on www.ManoukAkopyan.com.