By Norm Frauenheim
A tank is easy to understand. Gervonta Davis isn’t. He’s more mercurial than his bulldozing, armor-plated nickname ever could be. In the ring and out of it, he’s a dynamic force, often a volatile mix of powerful athletic skill and emotions. Unpredictable and unbeaten.
He’s both, and both are very much in play this week as he resumes his career Saturday at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in a lightweight title defense against Lamont Roach. Only the fight itself (Amazon Prime, Pay-Per-View) itself is predictable. Expect a blowout of the likable, yet smaller Roach, who enters the ring in possession of a junior-lightweight belt.
“You know who I am,’’ Davis said at a news conference this week when asked for a prediction. “You know what I do.’’
What he’s done is undisputed. It’s hard to argue with 28 knockouts in 30 victories. Knowing who he is, however, isn’t quite as clear as his record, a powerful statement of his pound-for-pound credentials. This week, there were more surprises from Davis. Let’s just start with arrivals. Davis has a habit of keeping promoters and reporters waiting. He’s been late to news conferences about as often as he’s left the ring with another stoppage.
But Thursday he was on time and respectful. In part, perhaps, that’s because he knows and seems to like Roach (25-1-1, 10 KOs), who grew up in Washington DC. Davis is from nearby Baltimore. They’ve known each other since they were kids in the amateur ranks. In part, also perhaps, Davis knows he can dominate Roach.
On paper, the fight looks to be bridge to bigger dates, the biggest of which would be Shakur Stevenson. If not Stevenson, then maybe emerging Keyshawn Davis, the World Boxing Organization’s new lightweight champion. The opportunities are all there for Tank in a year when he could put himself in contention for the top spot in the pound-for-pound argument currently still led by Ukrainian heavyweight Oleksandr Usyk, all-time welterweight great and current junior-middleweight champion Terence Crawford and junior featherweight champion Naoya Inoue.
From rating to rating, Davis is among the second five. For now. There’s a sense that Davis is better than anyone included among the top 10. Nobody has his finishing power, consistently delivered with predatory instinct and precision. Still, there’s a guessing game about his plans, brought on by his own uncertainty, evident this week on successive days.
At a live-streamed media workout Wednesday, Davis talked about hopes for a busy year.
“I want to say hopefully I got three fights this year,’’ Davis told the moderator about a path that could lead to the top of the pound-of-the-pound debate
The next day, however, Davis wasn’t so sure.
“Yes, it’s good to be in the sport, but sometimes we’ve got to learn ourselves,’’ Davis, now 30 and a father of three, told Boxing Scene and other reporters Thursday after the formal part of the final news conference. “I’ve been giving so much to the sport, I don’t take the time to study and learn [myself]. Even if it’s not the sport, I’ve been dishing myself out to other people. I just need time for myself – to grow. And then, hopefully, six months or one year from now, I can come back to the sport and fight these guys.”
Davis has often been compared to Mike Tyson, who on one day would wonder why he’s in the ring and on the next day would talk about how much he loved to fight. Davis been been called the mini-Tyson for lots of reasons, all also on display this week in the build-up to Saturday’s opening bell.
Davis was asked about his precise power. He had a Tyson-like answer:
When the big punch lands, Davis said, “It actually feels like a home run, when somebody hit the bat and it’s just right on the target and it goes far. It’s like that. That’s how it feel when you actually hit somebody on the button, you know that you catch ‘em real good.”
Tyson’s description: “I try to catch them right on the tip of his nose, because I try to punch the bone into the brain.’’
From this corner, the guess is that Davis will finish Roach in a way that will include both descriptions — a lot of his own and some of Tyson’s.
But then what? That’s the bigger guess, one for Tank as surely as it was for Tyson.
Top Rank sued
A chill went through the boxing business Thursday at news of a lawsuit filed in California against Top Rank.
Manager/consultant William Keane is suing Top Rank for more than $25 million in unpaid fees, according to the complaint.
Keane alleges Top Rank President Todd duBoef asked him to secure a deal with alleged Irish gangster Daniel Kinahan for American promotional rights to Tyson Fury, a former heavyweight champion who said he retired in the wake of a rematch loss to Usyk. Fury has acknowledged he has been friendly with Kinahan.
Kinahan, wanted in Ireland for reported money-laundering charges, is reportedly in Dubai.
Top Rank did not comment.
