It doesn’t take long for Ryan Garcia to take over the room.The American walks into a meeting room in Las Vegas’ New York-New York hotel, dressed in bold pink tracksuit bottoms, with the WBC welterweight title belt draped over his shoulder, talking as fast as his fists fly.Garcia has a fight to promote — Saturday’s highly anticipated showdown with Britain’s Conor Benn at the T-Mobile Arena — and he is doing it in his own inimitable style. He admits he is a ‘chameleon’ character — a devout Christian with a controversial past, and who peppers his conversation with curse words — but says he can be the new face of boxing and the undisputed champion at welterweight.The 28-year-old Californian was an early adopter of social media, and now streams chunks of his days on YouTube.“You never know what you’re going to get with me,” he tells The Athletic. “I know how to get serious, but I love being joyful and having fun with everybody.”It makes him an obvious headline act for Mexican Independence weekend, a date synonymous with big-name fighters being the star attraction on The Strip. Still, rewind two years, and there was little to enjoy about Garcia’s predicament.After exhibiting some bizarre behaviour in the build-up to his fight with Devin Haney in April 2024, which had many worried about his mental health, he failed two drug tests conducted around the bout for the banned substance ostarine.Ryan Garcia knocks down Devin Haney in a fight that was later scrubbed from the record books (Al Bello/Getty Images)Garcia denied taking the performance-enhancing drug, blaming contaminated supplements. His stunning win in Brooklyn, however, was scrubbed from the record books, and the New York State Athletic Commission issued Garcia a one-year ban.It was the start of a very public disintegration. He was drinking heavily and abusing substances while posting conspiracy theories on X on an almost daily basis. At one point he uttered a series of racial slurs about Black people and Muslims on a livestream — behaviour that saw him expelled by the WBC — before later apologising and being reinstated.He was arrested and charged for causing $15,000 worth of damage at a Los Angeles hotel. After paying restitution close to the value of the vandalism, the case was dismissed.Garcia appeared to be in a permanent tailspin.“I feel like if people knew the context of why I was so angry and understood how much I had a passion to win that fight (against Haney) and then ultimately for them to say that I took steroids when I know I didn’t, it would p— anybody off,” Garcia tells The Athletic.“And I was already having mental health struggles before the fight. But, you know, I was so determined to beat Devin Haney that I fought through those mental health issues before going into the fight.