On June 20, the New York State Athletic Commission announced that it had reached a settlement with Ryan Garcia.

Garcia defeated Devin Haney by majority decision at Barclays Center on April 20. But his triumph was soon tarnished. On May 1, it was revealed that urine samples taken from Ryan by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (VADA) on April 19 and April 20 had tested positive for ostarine – a banned performance-enhancing drug that helps users build muscle mass, lose fat, and increase stamina. The two “B” samples taken from Garcia were subsequently tested at his request and also came back positive.

The June 20 settlement between the NYSAC and Garcia provided for the following:

(1) Garcia’s victory over Haney was changed to “no contest” on each fighter’s official record.

(2) Garcia was fined $10,000 (payable to the NYSAC).

(3) Garcia’s official purse, which was less than what he was actually paid for the fight, was forfeited and returned to Golden Boy (his promoter).

And most significantly;

(4)  Garcia’s professional boxing license was suspended until at least April 20, 2025, at which time he will be able to resume his ring career provided that he provides satisfactory evidence to the NYSAC (including the result of at least one PED test) that he is medically fit to fight.

As part of the settlement, Garcia waived his right to a hearing and any appeal of the Consent Order which embodied the terms of the agreement.

The announcement marked an end to an unfortunate series of events that occurred primarily on the watch of former NYSAC executive director Kim Sumbler who, citing family and health reasons, had announced her resignation on May 7.  Sumbler lived in Canada and was out of the commission office far more than she was in it during her seven-year tenure as executive director.

Let’s put the issues in perspective.

I

THE NEW YORK STATE ATHLETIC COMMISSION SHOULDN’T HAVE ALLOWED RYAN GARCIA TO FIGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE

In the months leading up to Haney-Garcia, Garcia (who has acknowledged having mental health issues in the past) posted a series of conspiracy-theory rants on social media that focused on satanic ritual sex, aliens, time travel, and demons. He predicted that an earthquake would destroy Los Angeles on June 6 and recounted being tied down and forced to watch middle-aged fat men raping young boys in Bohemian Grove. He referenced his own crucifixion, spoke in tongues, and told his followers that PRIME (a sports drink backed by KSI and Logan Paul) contains cyanide and that anyone who drinks PRIME is “working for Satan.” His conduct at press conferences to promote Haney-Garcia was also bizarre.

Garcia’s behavior was so troubling that attorney Pat English (who would represent Haney after Garcia’s positive test result was announced but wasn’t working with Devin before that) decided to telephone Kim Sumbler to suggest that the NYSAC undertake a thorough psychiatric evaluation to determine if Ryan was fit to fight. English tracked Sumbler down at a motorcycle rally in Florida and voiced his concern. Sumbler, in his words, “was non-committal on the subject.”

Thereafter, Garcia was asked to participate in a short Zoom session with two NYSAC representatives (neither of whom was a mental health care professional) to discuss his situation and sign a HIPAA waiver that allowed a small number of medical documents to be released to the commission. Then, in an act of absurdity, the commission required that Haney submit to a similar “psychiatric evaluation” to “even out the process.”

One might note here that when the Nevada State Athletic Commission conducted a hearing to determine whether Mike Tyson should be licensed to fight Lennox Lewis in Las Vegas after he bit Lennox on the thigh at a promotional press conference, the Nevada commission didn’t require Lennox to undergo a similar evaluation. However, it did deny Tyson a license to fight, after which Lewis-Tyson moved to Tennessee.

Having been licensed to fight Haney in New York, Garcia acted throughout fight week in a crude profane manner that brought disrepute on boxing (if such a thing is possible). He missed the specified contract weight for the bout by three pounds and, as noted above, was later found to have an illegal performance enhancing drug in his system. In recent weeks, he has been arrested in California and transferred by the authorities to a psychiatric facility for observation. He was later allowed to return home.

Just because a fighter is physically fit to fight – and wins a fight – doesn’t mean that it isn’t psychologically damaging for him to fight. I don’t think the NYSAC should have allowed Garcia to fight on April 20. I’m not a mental health care professional. But the two people who spoke briefly with Ryan on behalf of the commission prior to his being licensed, aren’t mental health care professionals either.

II

RYAN GARCIA AND HIS LAWYERS ACTED ABYSMALLY IN RESPONDING TO THE PED TEST RESULTS

Garcia’s statements on social media and elsewhere regarding his PED test results speak for themselves:

*        “It’s straight bullshit. It’s a con job . . . I’m going to find out who paid who to create this lie . . . These guys are probably pedos.”

*        “Do not believe the hype. They’re trying to set me up. F*** them all. This is some bull-****ing-shit. These mother******* are known cheaters. They know how to cheat and they know to taint shit because they just tainted my greatest victory. One-hundred percent, it’s the devil, bro. I would never, ever take steroids in my life. I don’t cheat in video games.”

*        “It’s a fake. Fake. Completely fake. It’s fabricated. It’s the most fake shit I’ve ever seen in my life. They’re faking it. I’m clean all the way through. F*** them. They can suck a big one.”

Much of Garcia’s rage has been aimed at Victor Conte, the former BALCO mastermind who has since become a forceful advocate for clean sport. After claiming (inaccurately) that Conte was affiliated with VADA and had manipulated his urine sample analysis, Ryan proclaimed on social media, “I’M SUING VADA and victor conte. I’m taking this to court !!!!!! Be prepared. ITS WAR!”

Garcia’s allegations were so off base that Memo Heredia (Conte’s archrival) took to social media and posted, “As much as Conte & I have differences, I like to say he has no access to urine samples. He doesn’t perform any sample analysis or control laboratories for any bias matter. Ryan just trying to mislead and create doubt.”

Meanwhile, as the drama unfolded, Garcia’s attorneys were throwing so many red herrings into the mix that it recalled the words of Abraham Lincoln who counseled, “If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. And if the fact and the law are both against you, pound the table.”

After both of the “B” samples collected from Garcia by VADA also tested positive for ostarine, Ryan’s legal team said that he had submitted hair follicles to a Paris clinic and that these samples had been found to be negative. In part, their statement read, “Soon after being notified of his positive test, Ryan voluntarily had his hair collected and shipped to Dr. Pascal Kintz, the foremost expert in toxicology and hair sample analysis. The results of Ryan’s hair sample came back negative, meaning Ryan has never intentionally taken Ostarine in the last six months.”

But that didn’t put the issue to rest since the aforementioned Dr. Kintz had authored a study in 2017 that concluded, “Hair testing should not be considered as an alternative to urinalysis but only as a complement in [a] positive case, and it must be clear that, in case of positive urine results, the negative hair result cannot overrule the positive urine result.”

Shifting gears, Garcia’s legal team then cited what it called the “ultra-low levels” of ostarine in the urine samples taken from Ryan on April 19 and 20 – “in the billionth of a gram range [that] point to Ryan being a victim of supplement contamination and never receiving any performance-enhancing benefit from the microscopic amounts in his system.”

However this “billionth of a gram range” was sixty times the amount of ostarine allowed to be in Ryan’s system under the rules of the New York State Athletic Commission.

Hence, the Garcia legal team advanced yet another argument: “We are certain that one of the natural supplements Ryan was using in the lead-up to the fight will prove to be contaminated. We are in the process of testing the supplements to determine the exact source.”

Lo and behold! On May 30, Garcia’s legal team announced that two supplements (NutraBio SuperCard and Body Health) that Ryan had ingested prior to fighting Haney had been tested by the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory (SMARTL) and had tested positive for ostarine.

“This confirms what we have consistently maintained,” Paul Greene (one of Garcia’s attorneys) said. Ryan was a victim of supplement contamination and has never intentionally used any banned or performance-enhancing substances.”

But – and this is an elephant-sized “but” – both supplements had been sent to SMARTL by Team Garcia in unsealed containers. That violated the most basic testing protocols and left open the possibility of tampering.

“This is nonsense,” Victor Conte declared. “Look at the chain of custody. No reputable commission would accept open containers. Garcia’s people have to get the lot numbers for the supplements he supposedly took and send several containers, unopened and untampered with, to the commission for testing. And by the way; isn’t it odd that both – I repeat, both – supplements tested positive?”

Paulie Malignaggi lacks Conte’s scientific pedigree but came to the same conclusion, noting, “A substance that’s not that common, very rare, winds up in two different batches of two different companies and both of those batches out of all the places they could have went to in the world, both wind up in Ryan Garcia’s house. This is what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about Mega-Millions lottery numbers. If it turns out that this excuse is as false as it sounds ridiculous, does your lying prove intent because obviously you’re trying to cover something up?”

The supplement companies weren’t happy about the allegation of contamination either, since it had the potential to impact negatively on sales of their products.

Thus, on June 14, Nutrabio founder and CEO Mark Glazier issued a statement that read, “Nutrabio categorically rejects the reckless claims made by professional boxer Ryan Garcia and his team that the Nutrabio supercarb product caused Mr. Garcia’s positive test for ostarine. Nutrabio has never manufactured a supplement with ostarine and has never brought ostarine into our manufacturing facility for use in any product, ever. A retain of the Supercarb in question has been tested for ostarine by Eurofins and BSCG, both of which are leading independent third party testing providers. The testing confirmed there was no ostarine detected in the product. Further, the miniscule amount of ostarine allegedly in the open container of Supercarb [provided by the Garcia camp to its own testers] does not explain the amount of ostarine identified in Ryan Garcia’s urine which, at 6 ng/ml, is 60 times the testing limit. We take any claims against our company extremely seriously and stand by our process for ensuring the quality, safety, and security of our products.”

In sum, as Victor Conte noted, “Test results from unsealed containers provided by the athlete himself can’t possibly be authenticated. And Ryan Garcia’s lawyers know that. This is an attempt to influence the New York commission with wave after wave of publicity that would be regarded as ludicrous if it wasn’t repeated so often by con men and idiots.”

III

THE PROCESS BY WHICH THE NEW YORK STATE ATHLETIC COMMISSION RESOLVED THE RYAN GARCIA MATTER EXPOSED SERIOUS FAULT LINES AT THE COMMISSION

The Ryan Garcia debacle happened on Kim Sumbler’s watch. Following her departure from the commission, former director of boxing Matt Delaglio was named acting executive director. Delaglio is respected throughout the boxing community. He’s a hard worker who understands the sport and business of boxing and performed much of the nuts and bolts work for the commission that should have been handled by Sumbler during her tenure.

Delaglio is a capable public servant. But the NYSAC needs an overhaul at the commissioner level.

New York law provides that five commissioners should oversee the NYSAC. One of these positions has been vacant for years. The other four are filled by people who, for the most part, have little or no understanding of the intricacies inherent in combat sports from a competitive or business point of view.

None of the four NYSAC commissioners even attended Haney vs. Garcia.

The settlement negotiations that led to the Consent Order agreed to between the NYSAC and Ryan Garcia were conducted over a two-week period. Three of the four commissioners were aware that negotiations were going on but did not participate in them or vote on the resolution. The fourth commissioner was completely out of the loop.

The Garcia matter also exposed holes in NYSAC drug testing protocols since the commission’s own fight-night test on Garcia’s urine came back clean. How could that be? Because, to save money, the commission sent Garcia’s urine sample to Quest Laboratories rather than to a WADA-accredited lab. And Quest doesn’t test for ostarine. Later, the commission arranged for a WADA-accredited lab to test its Garcia B-sample (which came back positive).

The settlement between the NYSAC and Garcia was orchestrated almost completely on the commission’s side by David Mossberg, who has been a supervising attorney with the New York State Department of State since 2006.

Pat English (who Haney retained to look after his interests once Garcia tested positive for ostarine) says that the NYSAC refused to send him copies of correspondence and other documents exchanged between Garcia’s legal team and the commission, even though he was entitled to see them given Devin’s standing in the matter.

English also recounted a 75-minute conversation with Mossberg on June 18 and complained, “Mossberg didn’t know the facts. There were a number of legal points that I don’t think he understood. He kept saying things that were just plain wrong.”

English was also offended by the fact that Samantha McEachin (the attorney assigned to the NYSAC by the Department of State) repeatedly failed to return his telephone calls.

Paul Greene (who represented Garcia in the negotiations) suggested to the NYSAC that his client receive a six-month suspension. That was unacceptable to the commission, which was readying to temporarily suspend Ryan and schedule an administrative hearing when a bargain was struck.

The resolution could have been worse from a public policy point of view. It also could have been better.

Garcia’s victory over Haney was changed to “no contest” on each fighter’s official record. That was the correct resolution.

And Garcia was fined $10,000, payable to the commission, which was the maximum involuntary fine that the NYSAC could have imposed (although Ryan could have consented to a larger amount).

The problems begin with the forfeiture of Garcia’s “official purse” – the amount that Ryan received on fight night as paid to him by Golden Boy through the commission. Initially, the official purse was to have been roughly $2,000,000. After the penalty that Garcia paid for missing weight (believed to be $600,000) and other deductions, the “official purse” dropped to approximately $1,200,000.

But the forfeiture penalty has the feel of smoke and mirrors. The $1,200,000 is to be paid by Garcia to Golden Boy – not to the commission. That means it could be an unearned windfall for Golden Boy. Or quite possibly, Golden Boy has promised to give the money back to Ryan as a quid pro quo for his agreeing to the Consent Order.

It’s Golden Boy’s money. They can do what they want with it. With one limitation.

Under the terms of the bout contracts, Haney is entitled to 47 percent of the profits from the event. Logic dictates that Devin would claim that he’s entitled to 47% of any purse forfeiture that Golden Boy receives from Garcia.

And Haney might go further, filing suit against Garcia on grounds that there was ostarine in Ryan’s system (not hard to prove), that Garcia knowingly or negligently ingested it (harder), that the ostarine affected the outcome of the fight (harder still), and that Devin’s marketability has been adversely affected by what happened in the ring on April 20 (a slam dunk).

Now we come to the biggest issue – the length of the suspension negotiated between the NYSAC and Garcia. Some penalties should be eased by mitigating circumstances. Here, there are exacerbating circumstances such as Garcia blowing off the contract weight and his overall conduct in advance of the fight.

Garcia’s professional boxing license has been suspended until at least April 20, 2025, at which time he will be able to resume his ring career provided that he provides satisfactory evidence to the NYSAC that he is medically fit to fight. There’s a school of thought that two years would have been a more appropriate suspension. But the NYSAC didn’t want to go through litigation and what could have been a long embarrassing process.

The fly in the ointment is that the drug testing provision in the Consent Order (which relates to Garcia’s medical fitness) could be a sham. Prior to having his license reinstated, Garcia must submit one negative urine test result (not blood, only urine) from a WADA-accredited laboratory to the NYSAC. Garcia may choose the testing agency and the time frame for this one test. The agreement doesn’t specifically state what he must be tested for or the type of tests required. It only calls for “a urinalysis which does not indicate a positive result for illegal and/or prohibited substances as mandated by the Commission, including a negative result for Anabolic Agents.” This means that Garcia, hypothetically, could use banned performance enhancing drugs for the next eight months before cycling off and being tested and then have his license reinstated.

The Consent Order does state that the medical evidence must be “to the satisfaction of the Commission.” But a blind man could drive a large truck through that hole without putting a dent in the vehicle.

So what’s likely to happen next?

As Chris Algieri notes, “It’s a two-tiered legal system. It depends on who you are and how much money you’ve got. This is not really going to affect Ryan Garcia. Yes, it takes a win away, but Ryan Garcia doesn’t really care. He’s made a ton of money. He’ll probably be back in the ring by the beginning of next year.”

Correction . . . He’ll be back in the ring if —

IV

RYAN GARCIA NEEDS HELP

In recent weeks, Ryan Garcia has indicated numerous times on social media that he’s retiring from boxing:

*        “Y’all may catch me out and about but, as far as boxing, I don’t know. I’m over it. I may do acting or singing. I’m hurt and I’m done with it and everyone. The sad part is I’m a great boxer. And I entertain and knock people out. I’m sad bc I love boxing.”

*        “Boxing will be alright without me. But sucks. I was fun in the game. And it was fun to punch people. Forget I existed everyone. I’m outty”

*        “I’m officially retired.”

Few people take these posts seriously. Garcia is unlikely to retire from boxing of his own free will. But mental health issues might preclude him from fighting in the foreseeable future.

On June 8, 2024, Garcia was arrested at the Beverly Hills Waldorf Astoria Hotel and charged with felony vandalism after allegedly causing $15,000 worth of damage while having a meltdown. According to media reports, he was held for psychiatric observation for three days before being released.

On Sunday, June 9, Darin Chavez (a member of Ryan’s legal team) released a prepared statement that read, “We are aware of the recent arrest. This comes at an extraordinarily challenging time for Ryan, as he has been grappling with devastating news regarding his mother’s health. First and foremost, we urge everyone to respect Ryan’s privacy during this difficult period. Ryan has been open about his struggles with mental health over the years and at this time he is dealing with an immense emotional burden. The support and understanding from fans and the public are crucial as he navigates these personal challenges. We are working diligently to provide Ryan with the resources he needs. Our team is committed to ensuring that he receives the appropriate help and care to address both his immediate and long-term well-being. We ask for continued support and compassion as Ryan focuses on his family and his health at this time.”

That statement rubbed some people the wrong way. Soon after it was issued, I received an email from a fan who wrote, “What a child to act out and feel sorry for himself and blame his mother for his actions. He should stop thinking of himself and learn to think of her and how to be helpful to her. I’m not trying to claim moral superiority. It’s just that, when so many people have so little yet act with respect towards others, it is hard to watch.”

Or phrased differently, most of us have suffered grievous losses at one time or another in our lives. We didn’t respond by going out and trashing a hotel lobby.

Yet the enablers won’t be stilled. One day after Garcia entered into his settlement with the New York State Athletic Commission, Chavez and Guadalupe Valencia (another of Ryan’s attorneys) issued a statement that (with my comments in brackets) read:

“There is a lot of misinformation being disseminated [by Ryan Garcia and his legal team] about Ryan Garcia, However, the undisputed facts [they’re very much in dispute] are as follows. His positive test was the result of contaminated supplements [unlikely] of which he was unaware. The subsequent lab testing of the supplements proved to be in the billions of a gram [it was sixty times the legal threshold in New York and the supplements sent to the lab had been previously opened by Team Garcia]. And the two positive tests were in the billions and trillions, that every expert will attest to had absolutely no performance benefit [experts that Garcia’s attorneys hire aren’t ‘every expert’]. To be clear, Ryan Garcia’s sole advantage over Devin Haney was that he is simply a superior fighter [Ryan also had a significant size advantage as a consequence of not making weight and an illegal PED in his system on fight night]. Rest assured, there are multiple agendas [now we come to paranoia} that have been at play since Ryan’s clear and convincing win against Haney, and all those agendas have been aimed against King Ryan [enough said].”

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – MY MOTHER and me – is a personal memoir available at www.amazon.com/My-Mother-Me-Thomas-Hauser/dp/1955836191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5C0TEN4M9ZAH&keywords=thomas+hauser&qid=1707662513&sprefix=thomas+hauser%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1

          In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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