KATHERINE Ryan has issued a public apology to Victoria Beckham after the BBC upheld complaints over a rude slur that was taken off of iPlayer.
The comedian, 43, made the offensive joke about Posh Spice while hosting an episode of Have I Got News For You last year.
Speaking in an episode that aired on November 7, Katherine made reference to a 2013 private email sent by David Beckham, where he allegedly used the word ‘c****’.
She said on the show: “I don’t know that we are allowed to broadcast the c-word, but you did reference Victoria Beckham earlier and we’ll allow that.”
The BBC‘s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) have issued it’s ruling on the matter and have revealed there was no justification for Victoria being labelled with the offensive word.
Now Katherine has taken to Instagram in a new reel to apologise for the comment.
READ MORE ON KATHERINE RYAN
She began: “Hi I’m comedian Katherine Ryan and today the BBC announced their decision to uphold a complaint made by two very influential viewers about a joke that I tried to make on an episode of Have I Got News For You eleven months ago.
“At that time, though there is no defence, I was suffering from a condition called matrescence.
“I was in that building with a 10-day old baby. Should I have left the house?
“This is gonna be a tough one for the feminists because I was a woman going to work but I did call another woman a c***.
“Sometimes I forget that celebrities are not my friends. If I had called Jimmy Carr a c***, he wouldn’t have minded.
“Joanne McNally, c***, she wouldn’t have minded but this was described by the BBC as a slur.
“As though c**** are part of a protected group,” Katherine said in her trademark sarcastic way.
“The trouble is now that section’s been taken off iPlayer so the incident only exists in printed media, online media and then you lost the context because on the day, if you watched it, it was clearly a joke and the whole audience went ‘huhhhh’ and I said ‘whoaaaa’.”
She then plugged her new book before adding: “I love Victoria Beckham so much that I actually included her in one of my celebrity firstborn daughter chapters.
“I’d like to read you that now whilst remaining very sorry.”
Katherine went on to read the specific chapter about Victoria as she praised her for her work over the years.
She continued: “Yes, I sort of jokingly called her a c*** in the BBC and she messaged me afterwards.
“I apologised unreservedly because though she is a c***, Victoria Beckham couldn’t be further from a c***.”
Katherine shared a screengrab of the apology she sent to Victoria via an Instagram DM.
The BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit said today: “There was no such justification for a comment which presented Victoria Beckham as equivalent to a particularly offensive word.”
They stated that the word was justified in relation to David’s alleged use of it, but not in reference to his wife.
It added: “The relevant BBC editorial guidelines do not require programmes to avoid giving offence but do require that any offence should be editorially justified.”
According to the ruling, two viewers had complained about the remark, which was “gratuitously offensive”.
Now an edited version of the episode has replaced the original on the BBC’s streaming service.
Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. Thirteen division titles in 14 seasons, and in the year they didn’t win, they had 106 victories. We don’t have a lot to complain about.
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—The Dodgers won the division title again, clinching it Thursday with their win over the Reds. Remember the olden days of yesteryear when winning the division was a huge deal? Now it is blasé. Dodgers fans live in a time where they have an embarrassment of riches,
Let’s look at how many NL West titles each team has won since divisional play began in 1969:
Dodgers, 24
San Francisco, 9
Cincinnati, 7
Arizona, 5
Atlanta, 5
San Diego, 5
Houston, 2
There was no official winner in 1994, which was ended by a labor dispute.
I guess I’m feeling extra nostalgic today, but I remember growing up the Dodgers’ biggest divisional rival was the Cincinnati Reds, who moved to the Central division in 1994 and have since won a grand total of zero division titles.
If we narrow NL West titles since 2000, we get:
Dodgers, 16
San Francisco, 5
Arizona, 4
San Diego, 2
Poor Colorado.
—The Dodgers made room for pitcher Kris Bubic on the 40-man roster by designating outfielder Ryan Ward for assignment. Ward has been a favorite of newsletter readers for a couple of seasons now, but he really had no place on the team anymore. He’s too old (28) to really be a prospect and his best triple-A season came in his third season at that level. His numbers declined in triple-A this season (you can see his numbers here).
He’s not great defensively, and the team already has corner outfielders who aren’t great defensively. They passed him over for Josue De Paula when they needed someone to fill in for Shohei Ohtani, and there are several outfielders in the system who are considered better than Ward.
In all likelihood, another team will pick him up and give him more playing time in the majors, something he wasn’t going to get with the Dodgers. Hopefully we see him next season in the “There names seem familiar” section of this newsletter.
One of the knocks on Dave Roberts has always been his poor postseason managing. But his postseason managing has dramatically improved the last few seasons, and I’m not just saying that because they won the last two World Series. His decisions appear to not always be guided by analytics, like they are during the regular season. And it appears Roberts has indeed learned some things during his tenure. He recently appeared on the 6-1-1 podcast, hosted by former major leaguers Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins, and had this to say:
“When you’re talking about winning 11 games in October, I couldn’t believe more that it’s about people, and players you can bet on,” Roberts said. “The heartbeat that the analytics doesn’t line up with. I think that early on, my mistake was I continued to use that same method of the regular season in the postseason….
He also had high praise for two of his players.
“Mookie has said to me, ‘Doc, we wouldn’t have won the World Series if it wasn’t for Shohei and Yamamoto. And his point was, the discipline that they had every single day, how they worked with intention every single day … it raised the level even higher for our guys.”
Pete Reiser in 1941.
(Associated Press)
Pete Reiser never met an outfield fence he didn’t like crashing into and it may have cost him a Hall of Fame career.
Harold Patrick Reiser was born on March 17, 1919, in St. Louis. He loved westerns and as a child often walked around wearing a cowboy hat and carrying toy guns, so people started calling him Pistol Pete, which stuck with him throughout his baseball career.
After playing in 58 games with the Dodgers in 1940, Reiser came into his own in 1941 when he hit a league-leading .343 to go with 117 runs, 39 doubles, 17 triples, 14 homers and 76 RBIs. He also played great defense in center. That got him second place in NL MVP voting behind teammate Dolph Camilli (Reiser should have won). Reiser led the league in nine categories.
He followed that by hitting .310 with 33 doubles and 10 homers in 1942, leading the league with 20 steals and making his second straight All-Star team. However, on July 18 of that year, he crashed full speed into the center-field fence, which was made of concrete, while chasing a fly ball. He ended up with a separated shoulder and fractured skull. In those days though, you didn’t let little things like a fractured skull slow you down. He returned to the lineup a week later, but he wasn’t the same. He hit .244 the rest of the season.
He then enlisted in the Army and spent three years there. In 1944, after a long march in below-zero weather, Reiser was diagnosed with pneumonia. The Army decided to put him in Fort Riley, Kan., so he could play for the camp’s baseball team. With Reiser on the team, they were virtually unbeatable and Reiser was given his own room and excused from all other duties.
Reiser returned to the majors in 1946 and broke his leg while stealing second. He crashed into the fence in St. Louis and missed some time. But he still led the league with 34 steals, though his batting average dropped to .277.
In 1947, he was chasing another fly ball when he crashed into the wall face first. This caused another fractured skull. He was given the Last Rites by a priest in the hospital before making a miraculous recovery. He ended up playing 110 games that season.
He was a bench player the following season, as he had put on a little weight and had been slowed tremendously by his numerous injuries. The Dodgers traded him to the Boston Braves after the season for Nanny Fernandez and Mike McCormick.
By unofficial count, Reiser’s injuries over the years included four fracture skulls, multiple dislocated shoulders, two broken ankles, torn ligaments in both knees and and two beanings. He was carried off the field on a stretcher eleven times—five times when he was unconscious.
He retired after the 1952 season and came back to the Dodger organization as a roving minor-league hitting instructor. He joined Walter Alston’s coaching staff in L.A. in 1960 and helped tutor Maury Wills on how to steal bases. In an interview with this newsletter a few years ago, Wills made sure to give praise to Reiser as being a big part of his 104-steal season.
Reiser had a heart attack in 1965, went on to coach for other teams. He smoked a pack of cigarettes a day throughout his adult life and died of emphysema in Palm Springs in 1981. He was only 62.
Here are the postseason seedings as of Thursday’s games. The three division winners get the top three seeds, followed by the three teams with the best records. The top two division winners get a first-round bye. Milwaukee and the Dodgers have clinched division titles.
Division leaders
1. Milwaukee, 95-58
2. Dodgers, 93-60, 2 GB
3. Atlanta, 89-64, 6 GB
Wild cards
1. Chicago, 85-68
2. Philadelphia, 85-68
3. San Diego, 84-69
4. Arizona, 80-73, 4 GB
Remember, there are no extra games to break ties anymore. It all comes down to tiebreakers. Atlanta and Milwaukee have the tiebreaker over the Dodgers. For the wild card, the Cubs have the advantage over the Phillies, having won six of seven games against each other. The Diamondbacks and Padres have split 10 games, but their final three games this season are against each other, so that very well could determine the final wild-card spot.
How notable players who were with the Dodgers the last couple of seasons are doing with their new teams (through Wednesday). Click on the player’s name to be taken to their full stats page:
Anthony Banda, Twins: 2-0, 4.46 ERA, 2 saves, 34.1 IP, 31 hits, 15 walks, 33 K’s, 95 ERA+, out for the season
Cody Bellinger, Yankees: .276/.351/.444, 533 PA’s, 25 doubles, 3 triples, 16 homers, 71 RBIs, 121 OPS+
Walker Buehler, Padres: 8-6, 4.58 ERA, 143.1 IP, 142 hits, 54 walks, 122 K’s, 88 ERA+
Mike Busch, Cubs: .238/.347/.393, 671 PA’s, 27 doubles, 2 triples, 19 homers, 76 RBIs, 104 OPS+
Michael Conforto, Cubs: .238/.336/.471, 286 PA’s, 15 doubles, 14 homers, 43 RBIs, 120 OPS+
Justin Dean, Cubs: .375/.500/.625, 10 PA’s, 1 triple, 3 RBIs, 209 OPS+, in the minors
Caleb Ferguson, Cardinals: 1-0, 5.18 ERA, 1 save, 33 IP, 37 hits, 19 walks, 31 K’s, 81 ERA+, released by Cardinals
Jack Flaherty, Tigers: 3-8, 4.59 ERA, 86.1 IP, 80 hits, 42 walks, 102 K’s, 92 ERA+, on the IL
Kenley Jansen, Tigers: 4-6, 3.43 ERA, 20 saves, 42 IP, 24 hits, 23 walks, 48 K’s, 123 ERA+
Craig Kimbrel, Royals: 1-5, 4.50 ERA, 1 save, 46 IP, 40 hits, 22 walks, 40 K’s, 94 ERA+
Gavin Lux, Rays: on the IL
Dustin May, Brewers: 7-9, 4.49 ERA, 138.1 IP, 132 hits, 46 walks, 133 K’s, 88 ERA+
Zach McKinstry, Tigers: .204/.289/.301, 411 PA’s, 15 doubles, 4 triples, 4 homers, 26 RBIs, 66 OPS+
James Outman, Tigers: .172/.235/.318, 157 PA’s, 4 doubles, 2 triples, 5 homers, 17 RBIs, 54 OPS+, in the minors
Joc Pederson, Rangers: .235/.329/.487, 432 PA’s, 12 doubles, 2 triples, 26 homers, 53 RBIs, 134 OPS+
Luke Raley, Mariners: .225/.284/.439, 287 PA’s, 9 doubles, 1 triple, 15 homers, 39 RBIs, 105 OPS+, on the IL
Corey Seager, Rangers: .234/.326/.436, 393 PA’s, 15 doubles, 18 homers, 46 RBIs, 120 OPS+
Justin Turner, Tijuana (Mexican League): .295/.395/.469, 263 PA’s, 21 doubles, 6 homers, 28 RBIs. Tijuana won the Mexican League title on Tuesday.
Trea Turner, Phillies: .240/.292/.382, 654 PA’s, 27 doubles, 1 triple, 19 homers, 57 RBIs, 79 OPS+
Miguel Vargas, White Sox: .249/.357/.473, 662 PA’s, 30 doubles, 1 triple, 31 homers, 84 RBIs, 131 OPS+
Kirby Yates, Pirates: 2-5, 3.40 ERA, 3 saves, 39.2 IP, 31 hits, 17 walks, 47 K’s, 125 ERA+, on the IL
Friday: San Francisco (*Cesar Perdomo, 0-1, 3.68 ERA) at Dodgers (Tyler Glasnow, 4-1, 3.50 ERA), 7:15 p.m., Apple TV, AM 570, KTNQ 1020
Saturday: San Francisco (TBD) at Dodgers (*Tarik Skubal, 10-7, 2.70 ERA [3-2, 2.52 ERA with Dodgers]), 6:10 p.m., SportsNet LA, AM 570, KTNQ 1020
Sunday: San Francisco (TBD) at Dodgers (TBD), 1:10 p.m., SportsNet LA, AM 570, KTNQ 1020
All times Pacific
*-left-handed
Dodgers clinch 13th NL West division title in 14 years: ‘Something I know we can build on’
Plaschke: No more bubbly — NL West champion Dodgers appear headed for early fall
Dodgers co-owners Mark Walter, Todd Boehly sell Chelsea shares
Dodgers might be forced to leave Edwin Díaz off postseason roster
Vin Scully is amazed by Clayton Kershaw‘s curveball. Watch and listen here.
Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
A solitary man believes he’s been wronged by a vast, overarching system. Feeling helpless to take it on directly, he picks up a gun and violently confronts the most powerful person he can think of who embodies his grievance.
It is a chilling dynamic that keeps repeating itself in American culture, and one at the heart of “American Hostage,” a dramatic miniseries making its debut Sunday on MGM+.
The eight-episode series re-creates the true story of Tony Kiritsis, an Indianapolis man who, in 1977, kidnapped Richard O. Hall, a mortgage broker whose family Kiritsis blamed for his own financial hardships.
The standoff lasted 63 hours, during which Kiritsis kept a shotgun attached by wire to Hall’s neck, and it became a national media spectacle. Throughout the crisis, Kiritsis made live calls to Fred Heckman, a local AM radio news broadcaster, pleading to listeners for the justice he believed he was due.
A half-century after this incident, not even the creators and stars of “American Hostage” can say for certain why we find stories like this so compelling — or why they keep happening in real life.
“We haven’t quite figured this situation out,” said Jon Hamm, who plays Heckman in “American Hostage” and is one of its executive producers.
Jon Hamm plays Fred Heckman, a radio news broadcaster, in “American Hostage” and is an executive producer.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
The “Mad Men” star — no stranger to period pieces — said that beneath its retro production values and wide lapels, “American Hostage” is fundamentally about how people who feel voiceless in our society fight to be heard, even if the means is violence.
“There’s a lot that really resonates in the current media landscape and culture 50 years down the road, that people can still really connect with,” Hamm said.
Hamm and his colleagues hardly need to argue that point when the nation has been fixated on the case of Luigi Mangione, who in August pleaded guilty to federal charges in the December 2024 killing of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare.
Though work on “American Hostage” had begun before Mangione’s crimes and the show was not inspired or motivated by them, series co-creator Shawn Ryan said that audiences have a boundless fascination with these types of stories — with or without any counterparts in current events.
“Dramatically, it’s always very interesting to see somebody do the wrong thing for the right reason,” Ryan said.
The TV series originated with a 2022 scripted podcast, produced by Criminal Content and also called “American Hostage,” on which Hamm also played the role of Heckman. It told of how Kiritsis, an Army veteran, enacted the kidnapping on his belief that the Hall family had swindled him on his mortgage — a loan for land where he had hoped to build a shopping center.
While Kiritsis sought to use Hall’s life as a bargaining chip for prosecutorial immunity, he also portrayed himself as an underdog taking on powerful financial interests. On the other end, Heckman wrestled with the moral predicament of giving airtime to a potential murderer while hoping to keep Hall alive. (Hall survived the ordeal and Kiritsis, acquitted of his crimes by reason of insanity, was later institutionalized.)
In the spring of 2022, Hamm approached Ryan, the creator of TV thrillers like “The Shield” and “The Night Agent,” with the idea of adapting the “American Hostage” podcast into a miniseries.
Ryan created the TV adaptation with Eileen Myers, a collaborator of his on shows like “Last Resort” and “Mad Dogs.” They both saw in the source material a story that was a combination of classic 1970s films like “Network” and “Dog Day Afternoon.”
(In a parallel development, Kiritsis’ story was also adapted into the Gus Van Sant film “Dead Man’s Wire,” which was a box-office disappointment earlier this year.)
Ryan and Myers said they were fascinated with how the American news media covered the kidnapping in instantaneous fashion and in an era long before the internet. In the 1970s, Ryan said, “There were fewer journalists and they were better and more trusted, and if Walter Cronkite said something, you believed it.”
Shawn Ryan, Jon Hamm and Eileen Myers executive produce the TV adaptation of “American Hostage.” Hamm approached Ryan, who brought in Myers to co-create and co-showrun the series.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The question that journalists like Heckman were confronted with, Myers said, was, “Do you allow a man who’s got a shotgun to somebody’s head dictate the terms of whether you’re going to put them on the air or not?”
Hamm, who has played alluring if ultimately disreputable characters on “Mad Men” and now Apple TV’s “Your Friends & Neighbors,” said he appreciated that “American Hostage” gave him a character who an audience can feel good about rooting for.
“I thought, I’m 55 years old,” Hamm said. “I was close to Fred’s age when this all went down. It was fun to play somebody morally conflicted that is actually on the good side.”
With some hesitation, Hamm pointed to the career trajectory of Bryan Cranston, who followed his celebrated heel turn on “Breaking Bad” with projects like “All the Way,” the play and TV film about President Lyndon B. Johnson.
“I don’t want to draw a comparison that’s stretching the bounds of reality,” Hamm said, “but Bryan went from Walter White to LBJ. You go, ‘All right — he’s still morally conflicted, but at least he’s on the right side of things.’”
“American Hostage” also benefited from the casting of Giovanni Ribisi (“Saving Private Ryan,” “Avatar,” “Sneaky Pete”), who brings a blend of volatility and humanity to the role of Tony Kiritsis.
Hamm recalled how Ribisi was in the midst of shooting another project — the upcoming Prime Video miniseries “The Greatest,” about Muhammad Ali — when he agreed to do a reading for “American Hostage” over Zoom.
“He brings value to every project he does, and he’s picky, as he should be,” Hamm said. “He’s a phenomenal DP — he might just go be a camera person or something if he wants to do it. So we were lucky to get him.”
Giovanni Ribisi plays Tony Kiritsis, the man who kidnapped Richard O. Hall. “So we were lucky to get him,” Hamm said.
(Steven Ackerman / MGM+/Sony Pictures Television)
There are of course unavoidable parallels between the stories of Kiritsis and Mangione, including the fact that both men were celebrated as folk heroes by some people who identified with their broader resentments.
But Hamm drew a crucial distinction between the two cases: Mangione “killed a guy,” he said. “He shot a man in cold blood. Like, I don’t care how good your point is. That’s not how we do it.”
Going back to the Boston Tea Party, Hamm said, every era of American history has had its dissidents who feel “wronged and done over by a system that is stacked against you” and are willing to take aggressive actions against it.
Hamm said that feeling persists and thrives today. “I think this is a big part of the rise of Trumpism,” he said. “I think this is a big part of the rise of the MAGA mentality, of ‘I have been done wrong and no one is hearing my complaints.’”
When those feelings go unaddressed for long enough, Hamm said, people will come to accept a certain amount of lawlessness from the figures they feel can solve their problems.
“We have a guy in the Oval Office right now who thinks that the laws don’t apply to him and a Supreme Court that said, ‘Yeah, they don’t — you can do whatever you want,’” he said.
For supporters of President Trump, Hamm said, “I think it’s fun for them to be able to flout the law and say, ‘Who cares?’ and all the things that they’re currently saying, but it’s not the principles that we were founded on.”
Hamm and Ryan make no secret of the fact that they’d like to keep “American Hostage” going as an anthology series and explore more of what Hamm called “these watershed moments of American life, to see how they rippled and how we got here from there.”
One could certainly imagine other events that would fit the show’s interest in real-life hostage crises that became media spectacles — the 1974 abduction of Patty Hearst; the 1963 kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr. — though Hamm kept any specific plans for the series close to the vest.
Perhaps the upper limits they face are the hours in a day to make and to broadcast the show.
“We’re living in great times right now for television,” Hamm said. “There’s so many opportunities to tell stories. Almost too many.”
Wrexham co-owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac have taken a light-hearted jab at this weekend’s opponents Southampton by referencing the Spygate saga in a cheeky social media post.
The Saints visit their Championship rivals at the Racecourse Ground on Saturday (15:00 BST) and the Hollywood duo did not miss their chance to make light of last season’s play-off drama.
Southampton were kicked out of the play-off final and docked four points after an intern was found observing semi-final opponents Middlesbrough in training, with similar incidents later found to have taken place at Oxford United and Ipswich Town earlier in the campaign.
Wrexham’s A-list duo appeared in a video on Wrexham’s X account, which started with Reynolds emerging from behind a tree.
In a skit nominally aimed at promoting shirt sponsor Firefox, Deadpool star Reynolds says: “Today, for no particular reason, we want to talk about the importance of privacy.”
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia creator Mac adds: “Specifically, how to prevent spies from seeing what you’re doing.”
While the English Football League has declined to comment on the video, BBC Sport has been told that senior EFL figures feel the video is in poor taste.
Discussing internet safety, Reynolds jokes about searching for “how to run a football club” before the pair declare privacy is “important to people everywhere”, specifically name-checking Middlesbrough, Oxford and Ipswich.
Reynolds concludes by saying: “Refreshing, huh? An organisation that actually respects your privacy.”
The 59-second clip ends with the pair looking at a mobile phone, purportedly showing a Southampton pickleball team in practice.
GAL pals Laura Whitmore and Katherine Ryan wasted no time in letting loose on the dancefloor in Spain over the weekend.
And there was plenty to celebrate, as they attended Emily Atack‘s star-studded wedding to Alistair Garner in the hilltop town of Mojácar.
Mum-of-two Laura, 41, looked stunning in a low-cut blue and white floral dress with a leg split, as she wore shades on the dancefloor and sipped from a bottle.
Katherine, who is proud mum to four kids, joined her friend for a dance, mimicking her with her own pair of shades, despite the late hour.
The comedian, 43, looked sensational in an off-shoulder gown in various splashes of pink.
Laura shared a video of them enjoying their night off from motherhood, captioning it: “Moms out!”
Laura’s Love Island narrator husband Iain Stirling was also in attendance, as was Katherine’s partner Bobby Kootstra.
Rivals star Emily, 36, said “I do” again, just three weeks after she tied the knot at a local church in Bedfordshire.
The latest sun-drenched fiesta featured a 200-strong guestlist, including David Tennant, Alex Hassell, Rufus Jones, Bella Maclean and Victoria Smurfit from Rivals, as well as the show’s writer Dominic Treadwell-Collins.
Other stars included American actor Stanley Tucci and actress wife Felicity Blunt, as well as Emily’s old pal Leigh Francis AKA Keith Lemon.
The wedding party also included her pop star father, Keith Atack and her actress-comedian mother, Kate Robbins, as well as siblings Martha and George and other family members.
Guests arrived just after 4pm and were handed white parasols to protect them from the afternoon sun.
Emily kept the anxious groom waiting not arriving until 5.35pm, pulling up with her chief bridesmaid in a red Cadillac convertible and walked down the aisle by dad Keith.
The couple – who welcomed baby Barney in June 2024 and got engaged in July 2025 – originally wed at a romantic church service before a party in the garden of their Bedfordshire home where guests were treated to a McDonald’s from a personalised van parked outside.
Writing on Instagram after downing champagne, a thrilled Emily joked: “Christ, we have fun don’t we. I can’t believe we get to do all that again in a few weeks time.”
The party moved to Mojácar in the Costa Almería, a sentimental spot where the TV fave spent childhood holidays at her musician dad Keith’s old summer pad.
The town’s iconic Mirador viewpoint and two top eateries are being completely shut down for the exclusive star-studded bash.
The Inbetweeners star said earlier this year that her second wedding would be a “fat, f***-off party”.
LAS VEGAS — After taking 10 years to win his first world championship, Ryan Garcia needed only 4 minutes and 25 seconds to finish off Conor Benn on Saturday night in the first defense of his WBC welterweight title.
“I kind of figured he would just come at me crazy,” Garcia said. “Second round, I said I’m tired of him coming forward; I’m gonna stand my ground a little bit … and then he got caught with a hellacious one.”
Garcia’s sharp right hand to the jaw put Benn on the canvas early in the second round. Moments later, with the Englishman on the ropes, Garcia (26-2, 21 KOs) served a flurry of punches that prompted referee Thomas Taylor to step in and end the contest at the 1:25 mark and send the announced sold-out crowd of 18,855 into a frenzy.
”He’s exactly what I thought he was; he went in and tried to fight me. I think he needs to be a little bit more patient,” Garcia said. “I don’t think he has enough experience. I think he will be back. I have a new level of respect for him.”
Garcia closed -300 at BetMGM, meaning bettors would have had to put down $300 to win $100.
WBC welterweight champion Ryan Garcia celebrates after defeating Conor Benn in the second round Saturday.
(Steve Marcus / Getty Images)
The bout was more than another high-profile main event, as it marked a career-defining crossroads for both fighters.
For Garcia, he solidified himself in the 147-pound weight class as a durable, legitimate titleholder rather than a gifted attraction whose career has often been defined by controversy, inconsistency and unrealized potential.
The convincing victory positioned Garcia for a lucrative welterweight fight against the division’s other leading names, including Teofimo Lopez, who was ringside, or another major showdown with Devin Haney, who was also in attendance.
For the 29-year-old Benn (25-2), it’s likely back to the middleweight division after failing in his first world-title opportunity and a chance to escape the considerable shadow of his father, former two-division champion Nigel Benn.
Benn was transported to a hospital after the fight for observation.
In the co-main event, Jai Opetaia (31-0, 24 KOs) patiently weathered several cagey rounds before stopping Noel Mikaelian in the ninth round of their scheduled 12-round lineal cruiserweight championship fight.
Opetaia stunned Mikaelian (28-4) with a multi-punch combination and two crushing hooks, then sent him backward into the ropes with a powerful right hand. Referee Harvey Dock administered a standing eight-count before determining Mikaelian could not continue, ending the competitive fight by TKO at 1:30.
Da’Mazion Vanhouter (13-0, 10 KOs) wasted no time in his scheduled eight-round heavyweight bout, delivering a crushing right hand at the 1:58 mark of the first round for a knockout of Raphael Akpejiori (19-4).
In the 10-round lightweight bout that opened the main card, Andres Cortes (26-0) retained his belt with a unanimous decision over Mark Magsayo (29-3), with all three judges scoring the fight 97-93.
Ramirez writes for the Associated Press.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images News
