BALTIMORE — It began more than two years ago with a post-fight callout, the typical means by which one boxer tells another he’s ready to rumble.
From there, the feud metastasized on social media, a realm in which both fighters are expert practitioners. Who was ducking whom? Which man was responsible for a reported nightclub confrontation involving the grabbing of a chain? These questions bounced from coast to coast as two sizable fan bases wondered when and where the matter would be settled with actual combat.
The answer is Saturday night in Las Vegas, where Baltimore native Gervonta “Tank” Davis will take on Ryan Garcia in the most momentous fight of both men’s careers and the most momentous in boxing so far this year.
This is not a title fight or a battle for supremacy in the 135- or 140-pound weight classes. It’s something much rarer in boxing: a matchup between two telegenic, arena-filling young fighters risking their undefeated records in a stab at greater glory.
“I think I need this fight to be the face of boxing,” Davis said Wednesday. “The lead-up to it, the excitement, you’ve got a young, fresh guy like Ryan, who hasn’t lost, hasn’t been in no wars in an actual fight. I feel as though the winner definitely is the face of boxing.”
Davis and Garcia attract rappers, actors, NBA and NFL stars and social media influencers to their fights (Bad Bunny and Justin Bieber are among those expected at ringside Saturday as part of a sellout crowd in T-Mobile Arena). They have more than 14 million Instagram followers between them. They could continue to make millions of dollars per fight without facing one another.
But both pushed for the matchup despite the considerable complexities of bringing their promoters and home television networks — Showtime for Davis, DAZN for Garcia — together.
“We really came together and conquered the poison that’s been stopping boxing from making the biggest fights,” Garcia said. “If you look at boxing, it’s been hard to get prime fighters together. It usually happens too late. This is a moment that boxing has been longing for.”
Both he and Davis have promised to end the fight by fiery knockout. They have convinced fans and analysts that the action Saturday night could live up to or surpass the preceding two years of hype.
“This is one of the most fascinating strategic fights I’ve covered in a long time,” said Showtime analyst Al Bernstein, who will help call the bout. “There are unknown quantities. There are stylistic things that make it intriguing. … You ask what you’d want to see from Gervonta Davis? Well, we’re seeing it. We’re seeing him in against a definite threat, a very good fighter.”
As has been the case for much of Davis’ recent career, out-of-ring trouble looms just around the corner from this triumphant moment. Thirteen days after he fights Garcia, he will be sentenced in Baltimore Circuit Court for the hit-and-run charges to which he pleaded guilty in February. He could face jail time in the case after a Baltimore judge last September rejected a plea deal that would have spared him that fate. He’s also facing a misdemeanor battery charge in Florida after he was arrested last December and accused of striking the mother of his daughter with a “closed-hand type slap.”
On Wednesday, Davis, 28, brushed past a question alluding to the criminal charges against him “because this is about a fight and not about what’s going on on the outside in somebody’s personal life.”
The hit-and-run plea and battery charge have done nothing to diminish his power as a box-office or pay-per-view attraction. When he fought Hector Luis Garcia in January, 11 days after his arrest in Florida, he drew a crowd of 19,731 — a sellout — to Washington’s Capital One Arena and set a new live-gate revenue record for the venue.
His victory by stoppage in that fight was a mere tuneup for the grandest headlining opportunity of Davis’ 10-year career. He fantasized about this type of event as he toiled anonymously in the Upton Boxing Center on Pennsylvania Avenue, far from the Las Vegas glitz he saw on television when he watched his eventual mentor, Floyd Mayweather Jr.
From before the time he fought for his first world title against Jose Pedraza in January 2017, Davis talked about becoming a pay-per-view star. The big stage was as alluring to him as the brutal craft he perfected under his longtime trainer, Calvin Ford. It would be the surest measure of his rise from West Baltimore, where he saw too many friends and gym mates taken by neighborhood violence.
“I never thought I would be in Las Vegas having a big fight,” he said Tuesday when he arrived for the official kickoff of fight week, which will culminate with Showtime’s pay-per-view broadcast (also available to stream on DAZN) at 8 p.m. Saturday. “Coming from where I come from, this is big. … This is a dream come true. I won’t let my people down.”
Said Ford, who has been with Davis from the beginning: “The thing that really gets me is I used to watch the big fights on TV, and now seeing us on the big TV doing it, that’s the different part.”
Davis (28-0, 26 knockouts) took his first bow as a pay-per-view headliner on Halloween night, 2020, when he knocked out Leo Santa Cruz in San Antonio. He has remained Showtime’s top attraction since despite an undercurrent of fan frustration with his choice of opponents.
The Garcia fight is a horse of a different color, an event for which Davis will not be the only fighter attracting a robust audience.
He’s the elder statesman this time around, with more wins over seasoned opponents and more experience on big stages than the 24-year-old Garcia, who’s still dismissed as more style than substance by a subset of skeptical fans.
Davis has made it clear he’s among those who doubt Garcia’s mastery of the craft. He looked askance Wednesday when an interviewer lumped Garcia (23-0, 19 knockouts) with him among the most talented fighters in the sport. “I don’t really look too highly of his boxing skills,” he said. “He has decent skills. It got him here, so I guess it’s better than average. … You’ve got to have the whole package. I don’t think he has that. I think he just relies on his power and speed, but you need to have much more than just speed and power to be an all-around, sound fighter.”
He expects to knock out Garcia “probably in the seventh, eighth round or something.”
That suggests Davis will take his usual approach of starting at a deliberate pace as he gains a sense of his opponent’s patterns and timing. He has not stopped a foe before the sixth round since he beat Ricardo Nunez in Baltimore in July 2019.
If Davis does not throw enough punches in the early rounds, however, might he give Garcia an opening to blitz him with that aforementioned speed and power? Whatever one thinks of Garcia’s total package, the viciousness of his left hook, which he delivers in multiple guises, is not in question. He’s also the taller, naturally heavier fighter.
“ ‘Tank’ likes to fight guys that don’t hit hard, but I hit hard,” Garcia said. “When I hit you with that left hook, you’re gonna be on the floor. Asleep. Good night.”
Conversely, could Davis endure Garcia’s early fury, then whip a right hook over a lazy jab to scramble his younger opponent’s senses?
“He takes some time to get things going, but once he does, he’s a fierce attacker who has every weapon in boxing that you’d want to have,” Bernstein said.
As much as Davis recognizes the widespread interest in the matchup, which he helped build with his digital sniping at Garcia — “just us at each other’s necks for a long time” — he and his trainer, Ford, are also attempting to treat it as routine business.
“I didn’t really feel it yet,” Davis said when asked if the fight strikes him as clearly bigger than his 28 previous. “I’m not looking at it as something, like, crazy just yet, because I don’t want to psych my mind out and focus on the crowd or the hype around the fight and not actually focus on the fight. So I’m playing it smoothly.”
