Tank's mind filled with thoughts of retirement as well as Roach
Defends lightweight title vs. regional and amateur rival Saturday night
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WBA lightweight titleholder Gervonta “Tank” Davis is one of boxing’s best fighters and the sport’s biggest American star, but he has boxed since he was a child. Now, at age 30, perhaps the strain, be it mental or physical, has taken its toll, leading him to openly discuss retirement.
There remain a variety of major fights available for Davis to pursue, including a unification fight with WBC titlist Shakur Stevenson, which would easily be the highest-profile bout that could be made between American champions, or a fight that has long been discussed with IBF titleholder Vasiliy Lomachenko. Their pairing was nearly made last year before Lomachenko elected to break off talks and take time off, and then suffered a back injury.
If Davis wanted to move up five pounds to junior welterweight, where he has boxed before and won a secondary world title, a fight with lineal/WBO champion Teofimo Lopez would be major.
Whether those fights ever happen, however, remains to be seen, perhaps in part because Davis keeps talking about retiring.
He’s done quite yet, however. He will defend his 135-pound title against regional and amateur rival Lamont Roach Jr., the WBA junior lightweight titleholder, who is moving up five pounds to challenge Davis in the main event of a PBC on Prime Video pay-per-view on Saturday (Prime Video PPV, PPV.COM, 8 p.m. ET, $79.95) at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
But Davis’ retirement talk is in the air.
When the fight was announced in December, Davis spoke of it at the press conference.
“After next year, I'm out of it," Davis said. "Yeah, out of this sport.”
He has repeated some variation of that time again, including this week. One of those instances was when he was a guest on ESPN’s “First Take” and told host Stephen A. Smith, “(The end) is close, for sure. I don’t know. It’s just a little draining. I just want to step back for a little bit and just focus on me, personally. I feel like I’ve been doing this for some time now and I just want to give myself a break and focus on me as a human being, me as a father, me as a son and things of that nature.”
