With Ryan Garcia's Times Square experiment, excitement itself couldn’t land a ticket

The idea of going to Times Square under ordinary circumstances is harrowing enough, but to go there for a boxing event in on a Friday right at Happy Hour is lunacy. The biggest question for Fatal Fury — Turki Alalshikh’s latest eff-you flex to the combat world at large — was how was it all going to work? Would the ring be open to view for public passersby? And if that was the case, with the amount of foot traffic in that hell’s den of tourists and roving Elmos, would it become another New Year’s Eve Armageddon?

Turns out it was an exclusive affair for the 300 invitees or so, who slipped into a red-walled perimeter where the ring was situated. All the bustle was going on just outside there, where New York’s finest were directing the hordes on their way around the intrusion. It made for a strange sensation. At times, like when Devin Haney was circling Jose Ramirez in what seemed like an endless, hypnotic pattern, the center of the universe produced no sound at all.

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It was just the wheeze of the jab landing, on those occasions when it was thrown. Otherwise, a muted throb. Being ringside was like having been swallowed whole by a city; being dealt in a poker game inside the belly of the whale. With no real fans, there wasn’t a transfer of energy. And the fights?

Well, apparently excitement itself couldn’t land a ticket.

The boxing exhibition that was promised underdelivered, and the complaints outside of this fortress were damning. Haney, particularly, was gun-shy from the start. The extended time off after last year’s fight with Ryan Garcia just across the river in Brooklyn was a bigger factor than was understood. Though I’d have a hard time calling him “washed” at just 26 years old, there was certainly a hesitation to his movements, and when he did let go, it was like watching a man second guess himself in real time.

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It wasn’t the supremely confident young champ who bewitched Kambosos Jr. twice in Australia, in winning and defending his collection of lightweight belts. And that version of himself that beat Zaur Abdullaev just a few blocks down at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden felt more like a million miles away. At one point, in the drifting 12th round of a fight that felt destined to go the distance from the opening exchange, someone in the crowd yelled for him to “keep peppering” Ramirez, rather than load up on his shots. He was sharing in Haney’s play-safe wavelength, but it could’ve been heard as a declaration that the young chef needs more seasoning.

And Garcia, who showed up for his fight with Rolly Romero in the Batmobile for his walkout, while the riffraff was kept cordoned off to the side? Well, that was the second biggest question heading into Fatal Fury. How would Garcia look as the well-behaving, sane-seeming fighter, rather than the unhinged version of himself that we saw at the Barclays? There was genuine curiosity to that. Garcia rolled up to Brooklyn last April like Jim Morrison rolled up to Miami back in the day, with enough booze and drugs in his system to almost guarantee something cataclysmic.

People were concerned. Eddie Hearn wondered if he’d soon be dead. Attorneys and psychiatrics alike were keeping an eye on things, especially as he repeated “Thank you, Jesus” at least dozen times before his “I’m strong” chant devolved into an amplified growl. If those red flags weren’t enough, after upsetting Haney with a completely shocking performance, the discovery of the performance-enhancing drug ostarine in his system completed the tragic tale.

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A yearlong suspension followed. Psych evals. Lawsuits.

Record adjustments. Then Fatal Fury.

And after watching the 10-to-1 favorite Garcia get dropped by Rolly with a left hook in the second round, and laid into for large portions through the rest of the fight, you had to wonder — was the first fight a piece of spectacular fiction? Sometimes when an artist loses his vices it results into something so ordinary as to become glaring. Those altered states were a big part of the story line on Friday night in New York. The classier version of Garcia wasn’t concealing a madman; he’d left him back in Victorville. Or in his rearview mirror. He said afterward he felt like he was sparring out there, like it wasn’t a real fight.

This was a hell of a time to lose the gravity of the moment.

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However you want to read into it, Garcia was perhaps the biggest disappointment of the night. When they asked the interloper Romero who he’d want to fight next, especially since he and Haney have had words in the past, Romero said he still wanted to see Garcia and Haney run it back. Oh man…

All the flowers that you planted, mama, in the backyard…all died when you went away…

Talk about misusing the microphone. And that was the limp note in which all festivities ended.

In the end, all of this did make you wonder about the third biggest question for Fatal Fury, which confounded fans throughout — why wasn’t Garcia rematching Haney in the first place? It was through that rivalry’s saga that all of this came together, yet they were kept separate in the same showcase. If the idea was to build toward it, the gamble was lost. Is there still an appetite for Garcia vs. Haney 2? And is it still the mega-watt feature it could’ve been?

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The kind of card that can headline a card in the heart of Manhattan?

If there was a bright spot it was Teofimo Lopez schooling Arnold Barboza Jr. to retain his WBO light welterweight title. Hailing from Brooklyn, he had the most vocal support among the exclusives in attendance. Even though Barboza is 5-foot-9 on his tippy-toes and weighs a buck forty, Lopez's peanut gallery kept shouting that Barboza was “big and stupid,” and referring to him as a hyena. Lopez gave them a fine salute as he stood on the ropes in victory, as a siren screamed down a block in Manhattan.

It was a novel thing to have a boxing card in the middle of Times Square. Yet it was strange, too. Half of its appeal was that it was made possible. That it was happening. That Alalshikh could place a round piece into a square (or in this case, a squared circle into Times Square). As a group of yellow-vested construction workers watched on from a platform just above the ring and the lights flickered different colors onto the combatants, it had a classic New York feel.

In that way, it shared with some of the boxing events of old.

Getting out of there was hell.