Can Ryan Garcia become this generation's face of boxing?

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  Brett OkamotoSep 11, 2026, 07:36 AM ET

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  Brett Okamoto has reported on mixed martial arts and boxing at ESPN since 2010. He has covered all of the biggest events in combat sports during that time, including in-depth interviews and features with names such as Dana White, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Conor McGregor, Nate Diaz, Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao and Georges St-Pierre. He was also a producer on the 30 for 30 film: "Chuck and Tito," which looked back at the careers and rivalry of Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz. He lives in Las Vegas, and is an avid, below-average golfer in his spare time.

LAS VEGAS -- Ryan Garcia, the WBC welterweight champion of the world, was cooking a cheeseburger on a live stream with content creator Nina Drama, when he received a FaceTime call from Dana White to congratulate him on the success of a commercial promoting his upcoming fight against Conor Benn. The video had reached more than 17 million views in a single week.

"Yes, sir, we're doing our job," Garcia told White, who is promoting the fight as founder of Zuffa Boxing.

Welcome to the new world of professional boxing, where social media plays an increasingly important role -- one that Garcia appears perfectly suited to grab as he looks to become the sport's next face.

Almost 20 years ago, on May 5, 2007, a WBC junior middleweight title fight between Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather shattered nearly every major box office record in the sport of boxing. The fight produced 2.4 million pay-per-view buys -- a previously unimaginable number for a non-heavyweight bout -- and did so behind the charisma and skill of a Mexican American star in De La Hoya and a budding antagonist in Mayweather, who turned fans' desire to see him lose into millions.

Garcia, who was born in Victorville, California, and is of Mexican heritage, defends his title against Benn on Saturday in Las Vegas (Paramount+, 8 p.m. ET). He says he understands more than anyone how De La Hoya and Mayweather became the faces of their era, and has built his own profile to match them by today's very different, updated metrics.

"I've really tried to put myself out there in order to keep boxing going, evolving and kids loving it the way I loved it," Garcia told ESPN. "Watching Oscar De La Hoya and Mayweather, I think if I keep putting that life into it, boxing will continue to go forward. It's one thing for people to say they're the face of boxing. I really understand what it means."

Some will question whether Garcia can be considered the face of boxing, especially considering he is just 2-2 with a no contest (following a positive test for the performance-enhancing drug ostarine) in his past five appearances dating back to 2023. But if there even can be such a thing in today's climate, Garcia could very well be it.

The sport has had its share of stars over the past two decades. Canelo Alvarez is a four-weight champion with nearly 70 pro bouts. Tyson Fury became the lineal heavyweight champion by defeating Wladimir Klitschko in 2015, and drew a crowd of nearly 100,000 to London's Wembley Stadium for his fight against Dillian Whyte in 2022. Manny Pacquiao, boxing's only eight-division world champion, headlined the highest-grossing PPV of all time opposite Mayweather in 2015.

But in Garcia's view, no one fighter has embodied, represented or carried the sport at the same level of De La Hoya or Mayweather. At 28 years old, he's prepared to change that, and there is evidence the industry agrees.

The power of social media in boxing has never been more evident. Look no further than the numbers produced by YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul in recent mega events against Mike Tyson and Anthony Joshua. Add to that the emergence of White's financially Saudi-backed Zuffa Boxing -- which happens to be running the logistics of Saturday's event despite Garcia's promotional contract with De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions -- and could have a significant, yet-to-be-determined impact on the business.

Arguably no current boxer is better positioned to take advantage of the changing landscape than Garcia. He's always had the social media following (13 million on Instagram, 9 million on TikTok and 1.8 million subscribers on his YouTube channel), is now a world champion entering his prime at a time when new figures are getting involved, with potentially the money and infrastructure to navigate some of the historical challenges in making boxing's biggest fights.

"My plan is to get the younger demo into boxing," White told ESPN on Thursday. "We keep talking about Ryan Garcia's following on social media. The reason we keep talking about it is what that really means is that young people that traditionally don't watch boxing, will watch Ryan Garcia."

Should Garcia's relationship with Zuffa Boxing extend beyond Saturday's fight in any way, it could link one of the sport's most marketable fighters with a promoter who built the UFC from a fringe outlier into a mainstream force in sports.

"With the stars aligning, with Turki [Alalshikh, chairman of Saudi Arabia's General Entertainment Authority] showing up and Dana White getting involved, Ryan has definitely put himself in the front of the line of 'Hey, pick me! Pick me!'" boxing analyst Teddy Atlas told ESPN. "And they're picking him, for a lot of reasons."

Ironically, the one thing that has stopped many from taking Garcia seriously as a potential star in the past is the very thing that sets him apart now. His presence on social media was once used as a way to dismiss him as an "Instagram fighter," a young boxer more interested in building a following than winning championships. He's dealt with and answered questions about that narrative for years.

The label was so prevalent, Garcia has said it played a role in 2024, when he admittedly was "drinking and smoking" before his WBC junior welterweight title fight against Devin Haney. During an interview on the Modern Wisdom podcast, Garcia said he decided to give the boxing world the narrative it had already created about him -- a social media personality who didn't take the fight game seriously.

"I was like, alright, I'm gonna give them what they want," Garcia said. "They want a bad dude? I'll give you a bad dude. I'll drink, I'll smoke and I'll talk so much s-."

That version of Garcia seems to be now in the past. His impressive WBC welterweight title victory over Mario Barrios in February to win his first major title could have put it to bed. For that fight, Garcia went back to his roots, establishing his father, Henry, as head trainer. For maybe the first time in his career, he's not trying to prove legitimacy to any of the boxing purists who might not have taken him seriously before.

"That's gone," Henry, who also trained Garcia for the fight against Benn, said of his son's desire to fight the narrative. "The switch is that now he's a world champion. He's not trying to earn something, he's protecting it. And he will protect it for a while."

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Garcia and Benn sound off at each other on 'First Take'

Five years ago, an idea took hold in boxing: the "New Four Kings." It was a tease that an era of four young, then-undefeated fighters including Garcia, Teofimo Lopez, Devin Haney and Gervonta "Tank" Davis could replicate the historical matchups of Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns and Sugar Ray Leonard in the 1980s. In the five years since, only Garcia has fought more than one of the other three -- Davis in 2023 and Haney in 2024.

"I always used to think fighters didn't want to fight each other," White said. "All these guys want to fight each other. They all want to fight the best. We haven't run into any boxers where it's like, 'Oh, we're not ready for that fight yet, we want to pad our record to 27-0.'

"Look at Ryan Garcia. He has ducked and dodged nobody. That kid is willing to fight anybody. Conor Benn was willing to fight. All these guys are all willing to fight each other."

Garcia has promised to knock out Benn in less than five rounds on Saturday and turn his attention to Lopez, who just won the WBA title in August. He told ESPN he believes signing that fight against Lopez will actually be relatively easy.

"I'm the only one that's fought two of the supposedly main dogs in the sport, Tank and Devin," Garcia said. "I don't see anybody else doing anything that is showing they are willing to take the chance other than me."

Could Garcia, formerly labeled an "Instagram fighter," turn into his generation's face of boxing and bring a new excitement to a sport that has struggled to consistently produce its best matchups? Garcia is about to give us an answer either way.