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‘I had to turn it off’: Ryan Garcia reacts to boring performance from an arrogant Shakur Stevenson

Ryan Garcia criticizes both Shakur Stevenson’s performance along with ESPN’s biased commentary.

Ryan Garcia reacts to Shakur Stevenson’s win over Edwin De Los Santos.
Wil Esco is an assistant editor of Bad Left Hook and has been covering boxing for SB Nation since 2014.

After Shakur Stevenson’s agonizingly boring decision win over Edwin De Los Santos this past week, Ryan Garcia weighs in with his thoughts on the showing and explains why he thinks ESPN’s commentary of the fight might’ve been even worse than the fight itself. Here’s some of what Garcia had to say about the fight below.

“With [Stevenson] it’s not even about – I don’t really get ticked off by too many people, but he does talk really arrogant shit and he’s a little bit like that in person ever since the amateurs, just walking around like his shit don’t stink and it pisses me off,” Garcia said.

“Like I was in Vegas one day talking to his friend Keyshawn, we were having a great time, great conversation. I simply said ‘hey Shakur, come on over’ blah, blah, blah. He just looks at me and goes ‘nah, you got to come over here,’ like some arrogant shit. I’m like bro, what is that? We’re all on this journey together, we’re all just trying to figure shit out. You don’t got to act like that, bro.

“I’m not trying to be ‘who’s cooler, who’s not’ so it pissed me off. So that probably gave me a little bit more motivation to throw a little tweet out there. But honestly, he didn’t fight good at all, he was scared. And it’s so biased, that commentary was disgusting. I was disgusted by the commentary. If Shakur don’t throw a lot of punches ‘he’s controlling the fight.’ If somebody else don’t throw a lot of punches it’s ‘oh, man, he’s reluctant, he’s hesitant.’ It’s just so biased, I can’t even watch ESPN fights no more, I really can’t. It’s so disgusting.

“At least on DAZN, at least they keep it real. They don’t keep it real on ESPN…I like Timothy Bradley, I grew up with him. But his commentary – you got to be real, man. You can’t be like that, it’s not good for boxing…it literally makes your stomach turn. I had to turn it off.”

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