Ryan Garcia retained his WBC world title after stopping Conor Benn inside two rounds at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, flooring the Briton heavily before the fight was waved off.
Garcia looked dominant throughout the brief contest, dismissing Benn with relative ease. Afterwards, the American said he believed Benn could recover from the defeat.
"He just needs to gain a little bit more experience. I don't think he has enough experience at this point. I don't think he was as experienced as me but I think he will be back. He went in, tried to fight me," Garcia said.
"You can't jump in like that. It's not the move. I think that he needs to be a little bit more patient."
"He's an alright dude. I have a new level of respect for him. I hope he can come back and do great things in the sport."
Garcia calls out Teofimo Lopez
Moments after defending his WBC welterweight title, Garcia turned his attention to WBA champion Teofimo Lopez, who was watching from the arena.
"I want to unify against Teofimo. I think that's the move," Garcia said. "It's a huge fight and Teo's an entertaining dude and it's going to be a hell of a build-up and he's a good fighter too so let's run it."
The WBC and WBA are two of boxing's four major sanctioning bodies, and a fight between their respective champions would be a unification bout, merging both belts into a single title.
Lopez's recent record
Lopez has past wins over Vasiliy Lomachenko and Josh Taylor on his résumé, but he was soundly beaten by Shakur Stevenson earlier this year.
He bounced back from that defeat by beating Rolando Romero, the fighter who himself beat Garcia last year.
Garcia warns there is more to come
Despite his dominant win over Benn, Garcia insisted he had not shown his full range against the Briton.
"I was just getting started in there [against Benn]. There's a lot of things that I've been working on. But that's just another opportunity to show that in another fight," Garcia said.
"I have a lot of weapons in my arsenal that I didn't bring out yet."
