Ryan Garcia apologizes after threatening ex-wife, again pledges to go to rehab
Editor's note: This story includes description of alleged threats of domestic violence.
Ryan Garcia found himself again apologizing on Friday, this time for an incident in which he appeared to confront his ex-wife at her home and threaten her over text messages.
Garcia announced his divorce from Andrea Celina in January, around the time she gave birth to their second child, the first step of a year that has seen the young talent suspended from boxing for a year and expelled from the WBC for racist comments.
Earlier this week, Garcia posted a video to his Instagram story in which he could be seen confronting a distraught Celina over alleged cheating. Celina can be heard saying Garcia is "harassing" her and denying any impropriety.
Meanwhile, Celina posted screengrabs of apparent texts and missed calls from Garcia, in which the boxer claims to be "for the most part sober," demands to see their children, accuses Celina of being the cause of his problems. In another series of texts, he says "I hate you," "you are a whore" and "Ima f*** you up, Ima find you." There were also pictures of the damage Garcia apparently left.
"Ryan needs to focus on getting sober," Celina says in a caption on her post. "I do not want anyone who is always under the influence around my children and causing harm and destroying our home physically has destroyed all of our TVs and has broken everything in my house because he acts like a child."
Screengrabs and recordings of everything can be seen here.
Days later, Garcia posted a video on TikTok in which he apologized to Celina and, for the second time in two weeks, pledged to go to rehab. The bulk of the apology:
"I woke up the next morning regretting everything I did and everything I said about Andrea. I came on here just to say I'm sorry. Andrea, you're the mother of my children and somebody that I'll always have love and respect for. You grew up [with] me and you've seen me at my best and now you've seen me at my worst. Andrea and everybody knows that I've got a lot of stuff going on right now, but I've decided to get some help.
"I lost everything in the past couple of weeks. My boxing career, just so much other things. I hurt Andrea, I hurt you, I hurt our kids, I hurt everybody around me for my actions. I'm sorry because I know our kids are going to watch these when they get older. I'm so sorry. I lost everything. I lost the one thing I ever loved me, who knew me the most. Andrea knows me the most. I'm sorry Andrea, I feel bad.
"I retract all my statements about her. She never stole money from me. She never did wrong by me. She never cheated on me. We weren't together, so right there, she's not a cheater. She's a great woman. Saying that, I finally decided to get some help. I'm going to rehab and in the next couple of months, you're going to see a change. I've got to handle some things, but after that, yeah, I'm going to check myself into rehab and get better."
Garcia, a social media-addicted agitator who wasn't known for being stable in the best of times, was already a pariah in boxing due to a galling series of actions over the past seven months that have seen him:
lose a $1.5 million bet to Devin Haney over making weight (he missed by 3 pounds)
post an unhinged tweet storm in which he proclaimed "I will swallow all steroids"
get sued for allegedly defaming Logan Paul's energy drink company
While apologizing for that last item, Garcia revealed his family was no longer talking to him and that he has lost several of his sponsorships. He also pledged to go to rehab then too, which is apparently a work in progress.
