Ryan Garcia needed less than two rounds to destroy Conor Benn’s challenge for the WBC welterweight world championship.
The immediate reaction has inevitably centred on how emphatically Benn lost. How could one of British boxing’s biggest names be dispatched so easily? What went wrong? Was Benn exposed?
I think there is a more interesting question.
Why are we surprised?
Ryan Garcia vs Conor Benn was a huge boxing event. It involved two enormous names, a world championship and all the promotional machinery required to convince people they were watching a genuinely competitive contest.
But a big fight and a competitive fight aren’t necessarily the same thing.
I barely wrote about Ryan Garcia vs Conor Benn during the build-up because, frankly, I couldn’t give a shit.
I thought I knew what was going to happen.
Anyone who knew boxing could look beyond the surnames, the promotion and the size of the event and see the problem facing Benn. I suspect even the most hardened Conor Benn supporter knew, somewhere underneath the optimism, that if the best version of Ryan Garcia turned up, Benn was going to struggle enormously.
Saturday night simply confirmed it.
Ryan Garcia vs Conor Benn Was a Big Fight, Not Necessarily a Close One
Boxing has become increasingly guilty of confusing marketability with competitive equality.
Ryan Garcia is a huge name.
Conor Benn is a huge name.
Put them together and you’ve got a huge event.
That doesn’t mean you’ve got two equally good fighters.
Benn deserves enormous credit for becoming an attraction in his own right. His surname inevitably gave him attention at the beginning of his career, but being Nigel Benn’s son couldn’t guarantee everything that followed.
His aggressive fighting style helped. His personality helped. The rivalry with Chris Eubank Jr transformed his profile further because it connected modern British boxing with one of its most famous rivalries.
Eventually, Benn stepped out of his father’s shadow.
But somewhere along the way, his commercial development began to be treated as evidence of elite-level development.
Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Conor Benn becoming one of Britain’s biggest boxing attractions did not automatically make him one of the world’s best welterweights.
Ryan Garcia vs Conor Benn exposed that distinction brutally.
Beating Chris Eubank Jr Didn’t Answer the Question
Benn’s victory over Chris Eubank Jr in their rematch was impressive.
But context matters.
Eubank was an ageing middleweight who subsequently revealed that he had experienced health problems. Benn deserves credit for what he did, but beating that version of Eubank didn’t suddenly prove he could compete with an elite welterweight operating at his best.
Garcia represented a completely different challenge.
The speed was different.
The power was different.
The timing was different.
Most importantly, the level was different.
Benn’s aggression has always been one of the qualities that makes him entertaining. He comes forward, commits to his punches and tries to make opponents uncomfortable.
Against Garcia, those same qualities were always capable of becoming liabilities.
You cannot simply charge towards somebody with Garcia’s hand speed and punching power without giving him opportunities.
And Garcia didn’t need many.
He hurt Benn in the opening round before dropping him heavily in the second. Benn got back to his feet, but Garcia attacked again and the contest was stopped.
Less than two rounds.
That wasn’t enough time for some dramatic tactical story to develop.
It was simply one fighter demonstrating very quickly that he was operating at another level.
Sometimes Boxing Promotion Works Too Well
Promoters deserve some credit for convincing people otherwise.
That’s their job.
I’ve written before about the way boxing promotion creates anticipation and turns a fight into something audiences feel they cannot miss:
The build-up to Ryan Garcia vs Conor Benn demonstrated exactly how powerful that process can be.
Give people two recognisable names.
Give them press conferences.
Give them interviews.
Give them history, personalities and a world championship.
Repeat often enough that this is a huge fight and eventually “huge fight” starts becoming synonymous with “50-50 fight”.
But those are completely different things.
Promoters saw Ryan Garcia and Conor Benn and recognised an enormous commercial opportunity.
They were right.
The mistake was ours if we assumed commercial equality meant competitive equality.
Instagram followers don’t win rounds.
Ticket sales don’t improve your defence.
A famous surname doesn’t make you faster.
And two enormous names printed at the same size on a poster don’t automatically become two evenly matched fighters when they climb through the ropes.
Saturday reminded us of that.
I’ve Seen This Movie Before
Watching Ryan Garcia vs Conor Benn immediately took me back to December 2018.
Rocky Fielding was fighting Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez for the WBA super-middleweight world title at Madison Square Garden.
I was there.
In fact, it remains one of those boxing trips I remember particularly fondly, even though I knew beforehand that the main event probably wasn’t going to be competitive.
Part of the reason I went was simply because I wanted to see whether Rocky could live up to his name.
I wasn’t expecting him to beat Canelo.
Very few people were.
But there was always that tiny possibility that something ridiculous might happen. This is boxing, after all.
There were other reasons for making the trip.
The undercard was good, and watching a fight at Madison Square Garden was on my bucket list.
Sometimes being a boxing fan isn’t solely about whether the main event is perfectly matched. There are venues you want to experience and occasions you want to be part of.
Madison Square Garden was one of mine.
But nobody needed to pretend Fielding and Canelo were operating at the same level.
Canelo dropped Fielding four times and stopped him in the third round.
The event was enormous.
The occasion was special.
The main event was completely one-sided.
Sound familiar?
When the Undercard Is Better Than the Main Event, You’ve Got a Problem
One of the things I remember about Canelo against Fielding was that the undercard provided considerably more competition than the main event.
Saturday felt remarkably similar.
And let’s face it: you know boxing has got a problem when the undercard is more competitive than the main event.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the event shouldn’t happen.
Fielding absolutely should have taken his opportunity against Canelo. If somebody offers you a world-title fight against one of boxing’s biggest stars at Madison Square Garden, you don’t turn it down because everybody thinks you’ll lose.
Likewise, I’m not criticising Benn for fighting Garcia.
Of course he took the opportunity.
I’d have questioned him more if he hadn’t.
My issue is with the strange need boxing has to pretend every commercially attractive fight must also be competitively fascinating.
Sometimes it isn’t.
Sometimes one fighter is simply much better than the other.
Ryan Garcia vs Conor Benn was one of those occasions.
Conor Benn Is a Good Fighter — That Doesn’t Make Him Elite
Boxing will now inevitably go too far in the opposite direction.
Before Saturday, people were talking Benn up as a genuine threat to Garcia.
Now some will decide he was never any good.
That’s nonsense too.
Conor Benn is a good professional boxer.
He’s exciting.
He’s aggressive.
He can punch.
He’s built himself into one of British boxing’s biggest attractions.
And, importantly, he has managed to establish his own identity despite carrying one of the most famous surnames in British boxing.
None of that disappears because Ryan Garcia beat him.
But there are levels.
Being popular isn’t the same as being elite.
Being exciting isn’t the same as being elite.
Selling tickets isn’t the same as being elite.
Even winning a massive rivalry fight doesn’t automatically make you elite.
Sometimes you don’t discover the difference until somebody puts you in with a fighter who actually operates at that level.
Benn discovered it on Saturday.
Ryan Garcia Deserves His Credit
There is also a danger that describing the fight as predictable takes something away from Garcia.
It shouldn’t.
If you’re supposed to be better than somebody, you still have to prove it.
Garcia did.
And he didn’t spend 12 rounds cautiously demonstrating his superiority.
He demolished Benn.
The speed difference was obvious almost immediately.
Garcia could see opportunities before Benn could react to them. His power meant Benn couldn’t simply absorb those mistakes and keep applying pressure.
Most importantly, Garcia never allowed Benn to turn the contest into the sort of fight he needed.
Benn needed chaos.
Garcia gave him punishment.
When Benn made mistakes, Garcia capitalised on them.
When he hurt him, he didn’t allow him to recover.
That’s what elite fighters are supposed to do when somebody below their level is placed in front of them.
Maybe We Need to Stop Believing Every Poster
There is something slightly ridiculous about the way boxing works.
For weeks, sometimes months, we’re encouraged to forget everything we know.
We’re told the challenger has never looked better.
We’re told styles make fights.
We’re shown training footage.
We’re reminded about power, heart, hunger and destiny.
Eventually, enough uncertainty is manufactured that a predictable contest begins feeling unpredictable.
Then the favourite destroys the underdog and everyone starts asking what went wrong.
Maybe nothing went wrong.
Maybe the better fighter was simply better.
That’s what I thought about Canelo Alvarez against Rocky Fielding before travelling to New York in 2018.
I still went.
I still enjoyed the event.
I still got to tick watching boxing at Madison Square Garden off my bucket list.
But I didn’t need anybody to convince me Rocky Fielding was suddenly Canelo Alvarez’s equal to enjoy being there.
And I didn’t need anybody to convince me Conor Benn was Ryan Garcia’s equal to understand why Saturday was a big event.
Big doesn’t have to mean competitive.
That’s the distinction boxing needs to remember.
Why Are We Surprised Ryan Garcia Destroyed Conor Benn?
For me, the answer is simple.
We shouldn’t be.
Ryan Garcia vs Conor Benn became an enormous event because both men were enormously marketable.
Benn had the famous surname, the aggressive style, the Eubank rivalry and a British audience invested in his career.
Garcia had the speed, power, profile and, crucially, the greater experience at elite level.
Those things aren’t equivalent.
I didn’t write much about Ryan Garcia vs Conor Benn beforehand because I couldn’t see enough competitive uncertainty to make it interesting.
Saturday justified that feeling.
Garcia was faster.
He was sharper.
He was more technically accomplished.
He possessed exactly the weapons capable of exploiting Benn’s weaknesses.
And when the bell rang, all the promotion in the world couldn’t disguise it anymore.
Two big names on a poster don’t automatically produce two evenly matched fighters inside the ring.
Ryan Garcia vs Conor Benn was a huge fight.
It just wasn’t a particularly difficult one to predict.
What Did You Make of Ryan Garcia vs Conor Benn?
Did you genuinely expect Conor Benn to push Ryan Garcia much harder, or did Saturday simply confirm what you already suspected?
And perhaps more importantly, does boxing sometimes do such a good job selling its biggest events that we mistake hype for genuine competitiveness?
Let me know what you think in the comments. If you enjoyed the piece, share it with another boxing fan and see whether they agree — or whether they think I’ve got this completely wrong.
For more independent boxing opinion, analysis, history and discussion, head over to CMBoxing and have a look around the website. There is plenty more there to agree with, argue with and discuss.