Gervonta “Tank” Davis is the boxing kid without a childhood.
Last Saturday, at the Barclays Centre in Brooklyn, he knocked out another challenger and moved his career stats to: world champion at two weights, unbeaten in 27 with 25 fights finishing long before the final bell. He might also be the unofficial best fighter in the sport. Tank Davis is now 27.
In the ring at the weekend was Rolando Romero, who was unbeaten and fearless and eventually saved from his own lost senses in round six after he was dropped cleanly.
Romero was up on one of the scorecards. It was the fourth defence by Davis of his WBA lightweight title, which is one of the sport’s golden divisions.
In life away from the brutality and safety of boxing, Davis is the product of an empty system; he is a child of social services, damaged and made vicious by all he saw and witnessed growing up in Baltimore. He was the youngest of three boys and at five they were taken from their mother; his father was in prison. The boys bounced from care disaster to care disaster until a grandma recovered her lost flock after three years. It is a battle so many lose.
The salvation of the family would be enough of a tale, but then the little boy without the smile found the gym - it was a special gym, a gym placed at the very heart of The Wire, the seminal television show that put Baltimore on the map.
In the Wire, the gym is run by Dennis Cutty Wilson, fresh from a prison sentence; Cutty saves the most damned of souls in a city at war over drugs. The gym is a blood-stained and tainted refuge. In the real world, which is equally bloody, little Tank found Calvin Ford in the gym. Ford had served ten years. It’s just life imitating life - there is no art involved. Ford lost his own son, gunned down and Davis started to collect the memories of the friends he lost in his head. There was a lot in his head.
In early 2017, Davis won his first world title at super-featherweight and under the guidance of Floyd Mayweather, he looked set to become a big star in the sport Mayweather had recently quit.
Tank and Mayweather shared a lot of bad history. They had fathers who had been to prison, they had mothers who were addicted to crack and were now clean. They had their own broken childhoods to compare. In 2017, in London when Davis stopped Liam Walsh in a world title defence, the pair were close. They shared the same expensive clothes and Davis looked at Floyd with wide-eyed admiration; Davis was a mini-Floyd, a grand project for the retired fighter to shape and make. That was 2017 and Davis has edged just a little closer to crossing over. It has been a disappointment - Davis should be the sport’s number one attraction.
Tank has had a few problems over the years on the so-called safe side of the ropes. There was confusion over some jewellery, unpleasant images from ugly private skirmishes and a hit-and-run crash in Baltimore in 2020. The kid with nothing but blank eyes and ambition was driving a 2020 Lamborghini Uris. I never said the story lacked a fairy tale or two.
In the ring there were also problems; he lost a title on the scales and he has not always looked so devastating. There is nothing easy about Davis. He is raw, a great talent, but he now needs to finally become the star he threatened back in 2017. A rift with Mayweather might help and a list of big fights at lightweight would change everything for the kid.
This weekend in Melbourne, George Kambosos defends three of his lightweight belts against Devin Haney, who holds the WBC version. Both Haney and Kambosos are unbeaten; Kambosos won his titles when he beat Teofimo Lopez and it was Lopez who upset the great Ukrainian, Vasyl Lomachenko. That is grade on grade. These are big names, great fights and Tank needs to fight one or more of the men. There is also the pin-up, Ryan Garcia, unbeaten and brilliant with the effortless style of a glamour model on both sides of the ropes. He looks like a Hollywood star from the Fifties and dresses that way.
Kambosos, Haney, Tank, Garcia, Lopez and Lomachenko is the very best available in any of boxing’s eighteen weight divisions. There are a lot of truly great fights to be made if promoters and managers can contain their egos and prejudices. Make no mistake, any of these fights could define an age.
Tank might just be the best and not just the most damaged of survivors. There are sunny signs that Gervonta Tank Davis is ready now for the respect and praise he deserves. He smiles a lot now, especially when his mother is close. That is not a boxing fairy tale, it’s just an old-fashioned miracle.
