Davis, Garcia agree on one thing: Somebody leaving with broken jaw
Final news conference brings out fighting words
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LAS VEGAS — The Gervonta “Tank” Davis-Ryan Garcia fight-week news conference on Thursday threatened to put everyone to sleep with less electricity than a dentist’s waiting room before Golden Boy CEO Oscar De La Hoya, Garcia’s promoter, took his turn at the podium inside the KA Theater at the MGM Grand
Suddenly, the low-key, sleepy affair perked up when De La Hoya turned it up a notch with his confrontational words in talking up the 12-rounder at a contract weight of 136 pounds, which is easily the biggest fight of the year so far and set for Saturday (Showtime PPV and PPV.com, 8 p.m. ET, $84.99) at T-Mobile Arena.
“I look at Ryan and I know he’s ready. I look at Ryan’s team and they know he’s ready,” De La Hoya said, no stranger to mega fights during his Hall of Fame career as boxing’s top pay-per-view star or his time. “When I look at Tank’s team’s action throughout the whole promotion, I am left to wonder, ‘Do they really think this guy is ready?’ Catch weights and re-hydration clauses. Late afternoon weigh-ins.
“All these small petty requirements point to a team looking to protect their fighter, and why would they protect their fighter, unless they don’t think he’s ready for this moment? I really believe that Tank’s team is worried he’s going to lose. When you’re a young fighter, nothing feels worse than your team not believing in you.”
That led to fightin’ words from Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe, on hand working with Davis and a longtime De La Hoya adversary.
“We believe in Tank 1000 percent. So when it comes to you, you have no room to talk about anything,” Ellerbe said. “We carry ourself like the A-side because that’s what we are. You’ve been sleeping under the fucking wheel for many, many years. That’s exactly why we took all your fucking fighters and Floyd (Mayweather) beat ‘em all while you’ve been asleep under the fucking wheel, OK? And it’s gonna be no different come this Saturday night. Tank Davis by KO, like I’ve been saying, and it might be early.”
That set the stage for the fighters to have their say and ratchet up the rhetoric for a fight whose winner many believe can become the new face of boxing.
Davis and Garcia, of course, threatened bodily harm on the other man, specifically each saying they would break the other guy’s jaw.
“Everything is catching up to you. Everything is coming to a halt for you on Saturday night. You’re gonna learn the hard way,” Garcia said. “He’s gonna find out exactly why I’m here. You don’t get to this position without having something special. Anybody can see that.
“I just need one shot. That left hook. I feel like I’m gonna break his jaw with that hook. I just see him lying on the floor. I’m ready to do what I do. I’m gonna end him, I promise that. It’s over.”
Indeed, Garcia’s explosive hook is his most fearsome weapon. Garcia (23-0, 19 KOs), 24, of Los Angeles, has used it to smash many opponents, most recently Javier Fortuna in a sixth-round knockout in July.
Davis (28-0, 26 KOs), 28, a southpaw from Baltimore, has spoken often during the buildup about how that Garcia’s hook is the only weapon he has — and that it’s not even that good. He did it again when it was his turn to speak.
“All he talks about is that one punch. I only need one too,” said Davis, who is one of boxing’s most explosive knockout punchers. “I touch that jaw and I’m telling you, you’re going to sleep. I’ll probably break your jaw. We’re here. Enough with the talking. I’m ready to get down and dirty.
“He’s gonna feel me for sure. I am what I say I am. I’m that guy. I didn’t get all the way here for no reason. I put the work in and I got those guys out of there. He’s gonna see it come Saturday night for sure. Don’t forget I’m the most accurate puncher out there. Make sure you’ve been practicing on putting your hands up. He’s delusional if he thinks he’s knocking me out. That’s it.”
Davis said he would win by such ferocious knockout that Garcia should make sure that his mother and daughter are not in the crowd.
That is about as close as the combatants have come to making things personal. The fighters have largely kept the pre-fight rhetoric to the fight and what they’ll do to each other when both easily could have made it personal.
Davis could have taunted Garcia about his very public mental health struggles that caused him to pull out of a fight and take a sabbatical from the sport for a stretch in 2021.
Garcia could have gone in on Davis about the May 5 sentencing he faces after pleading guilty to four counts related to a 2020 hit-and-run accident in Baltimore that injured four people, including a pregnant woman.
“I’m proud of myself,” Garcia told Fight Freaks Unite after the news conference about not bringing their trash talk into the gutter. “It’s easy to fall into that nature of beating a man down. But I believe in forgiveness and I believe that you are the man that you are today not the man that you were yesterday. So, as long as he knows what he has done was wrong then I just choose to not bring it up.”
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Man, I just don’t know. It’s probably going to go to the guy who is just able to settle down the fastest and land their signature punch. Tank is so much shorter and smaller than Ryan, but being who Davis is and how accurate (that wasn’t fighter hyperbole) he is that’s probably an advantage for him. I’m not sure Ryan has seen punches coming from those kinds of angles at that speed and with that power. I could see Ryan stacking up rounds while Tank acclimatizes to his hand speed. Then BANG! It may actually be in Ryan’s best interest to press Tank early and smother him up with his bigger body, which is probably why we got all the weigh-in shenanigans from PBC and Ellerbe. I don’t know. I just don’t know. I do know I’m READY TO SEE THIS FIGHT!