Gervonta Davis and Ryan Garcia Need Each Other
Davis has been fattening up on easy opponents for too long.
Ryan Hafey/Premier Boxing Champions
NEW YORK – Gervonta “Tank” Davis is a box office star, a fact reinforced Saturday when 18,970 customers—“Paying customers,” noted Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe—crammed into Barclays Center to watch Davis flatten Rolando Romero by sixth-round knockout. Madonna was there. Tracy Morgan, too. Notable fighters from Errol Spence Jr. to Shakur Stevenson made the trip. It was the highest grossing boxing event in the building’s 10-year history—event organizers anticipate the gate revenue to approach $5 million—and irrefutable evidence that Davis, who has already packed houses in Baltimore, Atlanta and L.A., is one of the biggest draws in the sport.
Tank Davis is not a boxing star, not yet anyway, and a highlight-reel stoppage of Romero won’t get him there. Tank’s social media cartel will twist Romero into a quality win, as if Rolly’s sterling record wasn’t the result of careful matchmaking (hello, Arturs Ahmetovs), late replacements (Anthony Yigit, Avery Sparrow) and horrifying judging (paging Jackson Mariñez). Romero wasn’t the stumblebum that oddsmakers pegged him as going in but his lunging style was always going to leave him exposed to the kind of crushing counter Tank clipped him with. Afterwards, Ellerbe declared Romero to be the second-best 135-pounder in the division. Somewhere George Kambosos, Devin Haney and Vasyl Lomachenko are still laughing.
Tank is what he is: powerful, popular and, even after Saturday, still unproven. It has been five years since Davis stopped Jose Pedraza to win a legitimate 130-pound title. Davis has stayed undefeated since then, inflating his record with a carefully curated string of opponents, from faded big names (Yuriorkis Gamboa, Leo Santa Cruz) to flawed lesser ones (Ricardo Nunez, Mario Barrios), collecting a pair of hubcap titles along the way. As a deep lightweight division zigged, Davis has zagged, passing on opportunities to test himself because, as Floyd Mayweather said last year, “we keep things in-house.”
He can’t anymore, because right now Davis, 27, is living in an empty nest. The PBC landscape between 130 and 140 pounds is downright barren. Chris Colbert, a once minor titleholder at 130, was battered by Hector Luis Garcia in February. Gary Russell Jr., a longtime 126-pound champion, is coming off a loss to Mark Magsayo. A rematch with Isaac Cruz, who lost a competitive fight to Davis last December, is possible, but that pay-per-view performed so poorly those involved didn’t bother with the time-honored practice of leaking inflated numbers about it.
Davis needs a real dance partner. And there’s one available: Ryan Garcia. At 23, Garcia is one of boxing’s rising stars. He’s undefeated with explosive power, a former protégé of Canelo Alvarez who established himself as a legitimate contender with a win over Luke Campbell last year. Garcia’s rise stalled after that, with injuries and mental health issues limiting him to one fight in 2021. He's back now, and Garcia, who was ringside on Saturday, told SI he was ready to make a Davis fight happen.
“If you really want to show who ducked who, and you're really confident that I'm ducking, well then, we could record the entire negotiations,” Garcia said. “If you want to throw that in, I'm down to throw that in. I have never ducked anybody.”
Garcia is a social media superstar, but a victory over Davis would bring him another measure of the legitimacy he craves.
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Davis needs to push for the fight. Garcia, too. Because it’s complicated. Davis, a PBC fighter, has been built by Showtime. Since 2018, Garcia, promoted by Golden Boy, has fought exclusively on DAZN. For Davis-Garcia to happen, the networks need to collaborate, as HBO and Showtime did in 2015, when Floyd Mayweather faced Manny Pacquiao in what turned out to be the most lucrative fight in boxing history.
Will they? In a text message, DAZN executive vice president Joe Markowski told SI that DAZN was “very willing” to do a joint production with Showtime. “Looking forward to the discussions,” said Markowski. Stephen Espinoza, the president of Showtime Sports, didn’t dismiss the possibility of teaming up, but made it clear he believed Showtime would prefer to do Davis-Garcia on its own.
“Candidly, I don't know what DAZN brings to the table, to be completely honest,” Espinoza told SI. “I understand what UFC brought to the table in Mayweather-McGregor. I understand what HBO brought to the table in Mayweather-Pacquiao. I don't understand what DAZN brings to the table. It's not a big enough fight to split up five different ways.”
Except it is. Davis and Garcia possess two of boxing’s biggest fan bases. Different fan bases. Davis has been built largely in urban markets. Garcia, backstopped by nearly nine million Instagram followers, has ping-ponged between southern California and Texas. His last fight, a lopsided decision win over the unheralded—and completely unknown—Emmanuel Tagoe, generated $1.3 million at the gate. Davis-Garcia could exceed 500,000 pay-per-view buys. Maybe more. It could produce a gate north of $10 million.
It's not Mayweather-Pacquiao. But it’s not nothing, either.
Garcia gets it. Garcia is set to face Javier Fortuna in July (Cruz turned down the fight) in what will be Garcia’s second fight in three months. But Davis is the fight he’s after. In a telephone interview, Garcia told SI he believed the winner of a fight between him and Davis would be the new face of boxing.
“Over Canelo, over everybody,” Garcia said. “I swear. I promise you. That's just what it's going to be. It's too monumental.”
Will it happen? Ellerbe is skeptical. On Saturday, Ellerbe reminded reporters that he has attempted to make a Davis-Garcia fight in the past, as recently as last year, when preliminary discussions vaporized after Garcia shifted his attention to Manny Pacquiao (In a lengthy text message, Garcia expressed frustration with Sean Gibbons, Pacquiao’s longtime advisor, for allegedly leading him on). Ellerbe said that despite public comments, Garcia wants nothing to do with a Davis fight, taking a good-natured shot at certain reporters—or a reporter—in the process.
“Ryan don't want to fight Tank, man,” Ellerbe said. “Come on, man. You got guys out there like Mannix trying to pump him up like he's some killer. Ryan Garcia, he's a good fighter, got a lot of respect for him, but he don't want none of that smoke. He don't want none of that smoke because if he did, he'd make Golden Boy do it.”
Garcia, understandably, disagrees.
“Golden Boy will not be able to [prevent it],” Garcia said. “They can't. I will not allow it. There's no way. I will go to war to fight Tank. I'm ready to do whatever I got to do, because at the end of the day that fight is going to get me my respect, and I think I deserve that. So I'm up for the challenge. I'm very confident in beating him. He's a great fighter, don't get me wrong. But I'm just that much greater. And I want to show him, I want to show everybody what I could do, and that that's the fight to make. Everybody wants to see it, and I'm ready now.
“I've had to deal with a lot of just disrespect toward me as a fighter. And even though I've put in the work, been boxing since I was seven years old, been getting hit in the head since I was a little boy. Going traveling everywhere, going with my parents everywhere, sacrificing my childhood, everything I had to do. I paid those dues. I just did it in a smart marketing way. That’s just what it is. I'm smart. And honestly, now that I look at it, I think it's just because I'm handsome. Honestly, I think they're envious. And I think they just hate me. It's kind of cocky to say, but fuck it. It's true. I'm handsome and they hate it.”
Said Ellerbe, “Gervonta Davis is a terrific fighter. We have a great company. I have a great team and we're going to continue to do what we do: Put on these big events for the fans. Giving fans exactly what they want to see.”
Perhaps. But Davis is at a crossroads. He can continue down the current path, fighting lesser opponents, filling arenas and generating just enough pay-per-view money to make it all worth it. Or he can test himself and prove he is the pound-for-pound talent Ellerbe and many others believe he is. In a recent interview, Davis said it was time to take the training wheels off. The way to do it is clear
Tank needs Garcia. And Garcia needs Tank. Boxing? It just needs the fight.
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