By Chris Williams: Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson says he wants to see a fight between unbeaten WBA Super World super featherweight champion Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis and two-time Olympic gold medalist Vasiliy Lomachenko in two years from now. Tyson says the 24-year-old Davis (21-0, 20 KOs) isn’t ready yet for a fight against WBA/WBO lightweight champion Lomachenko (13-1, 10 KOs) right now, but he believes he will in a couple of years from now. It’ll be a bigger fight by then, and two champions can get a huge payday from that clash.
For boxing fans that point out that Davis is a world champion, and should be ready to fight Lomachenko, the fact of the matter is Loma has a lot more experience under his belt right now due to his amateur experience in his home country of Ukraine. Besides winning two Olympic gold medals, Lomachenko finished his career as an amateur with a 396-1 record. Although Davis had an excellent amateur career as well, finishing with a 205-15 record, he doesn’t have the same experience as Lomachenko with his great coaches in Ukraine. Davis needs more time for him to learn as a pro before he’ll be ready to take on Lomachenko in two to five years.
“He’s a ballet dancer, I’m looking forward to,” Mike Tyson said to Piers Moraga on HotboxingPodcast. ”There’s a young guy that we have from Baltimore, Gervonta Davis; he’s not ready for Lomachenko yet, but in let’s say two years from now, I’d like to see those guys fight,” Tyson said to Piers Morgan on HotboxingPodcast.
Lomachenko will still be in his prime in two years from. Loma might not be as good as he is now, but he’ll still be in his prime. As long as Top Rank is willing to let Lomachenko fight Davis in a couple of years, it should be a great fight.
With Davis’ punching power measuring out to be better than heavyweight Dominic Breazeale on a punching machine, he could cause Lomachenko a lot of problems if he hits him cleanly. Lomachenko hasn’t fought anyone with the kind of power that Tank Davis possesses. If Loma gets hit a lot by Gervonta, something could give. Either Lomachenko will break or Gervonta’s hands will fall apart. It’s more likely Lomachenko won’t be able to handle the huge shots that Gervonta is hitting him with.
Lomachenko is competing in a weight class above Gervonta at 135 pounds right now, trying to unify the division. It’s believed that once Lomachenko accomplishes his goal of unifying the lightweight division, he’ll move back down to super featherweight to look to unify that weight class against the likes of WBA Super World 130-pound champion Tank Davis, WBC champion Miguel Berchelt, IBF champ Tevin Farmer and WBO belt holder Masayuki Ito. Berchelt, 27, is promoted by the same promoters as Lomachenko in Top Rank Boxing, so that should be an easy fight to put together. Davis is with Mayweather Promotions, and they’re not likely to give him the green light to face Lomachenko for another two to five years. This writer believes that Mayweather Promotions will wait five years at the minimum before they let Gervonta take on Lomachenko.
Davis needs more experience under his belt before he takes on a guy like Loma, and it wouldn’t be right for him to take that fight until at least 2024 or 2025. By then, Gervonta will have plenty of experience as a pro, and Lomachenko will be a little older and ready to be beaten. Lomachenko is 31-years-old now. So by the time Davis is ready to beat him, he’ll be around 36-years-old. There’s nothing wrong with Mayweather Promotions waiting until then to put Davis in with Lomachenko. Look at Golden Boy Promotions. They didn’t let former middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin fight superstar Saul Canelo Alvarez until he was 36-years-old. Golden Boy obviously knew that if they put Canelo in with GGG when the Kazakh fighter was 31 or 32, it would have ended badly for their fighter Alvarez. So they waited until Golovkin was 36 before they made that fight with Canelo. It was smart for Golden Boy to do that.
”He’s going to have to fight for many years then,” Tyson said in response to Morgan commenting about there being no one talented enough for Lomachenko to fight right now.
Lomachenko will probably fight for a lot of years, depending on how his health holds up. He’s 31, which isn’t old, but he’s starting to break down with injury problems. Part of the reason for that might be due to his decision to campaign at lightweight, which isn’t a division that is ideal for his body size. If Lomachenko moves back down to 130, he could last longer with his career, because he won’t need to compete with guys that are the size of light welterweights like he’s doing now at lightweight. The boxing public wants to see Lomachenko move up to 140 and take on the likes of Regis Prograis, Josh Taylor, Maurice Hooker, Ivan Baranchyk and Mikey Garcia. That’s not going to happen unfortunately. Lomachenko has been uite vocal about now wanting to move up to light welterweight, because he’s not big enough to fight against those type of guys. The question is, can Lomachenko fight at 140 if he wants to? Yeah, Lomachenko could move up to light welterweight, and he probably beat a lot of the top guys in the division. The harder punchers like Taylor, Baranchyk, Prograis and Hooker would inflict a lot of punishment on Lomachenko. His career might be shortened from the heavy shots he would be getting hit with by those guys. With the power that those fighters have, it wouldn’t matter how elusive Lomachenko is. He would get hit eventually by those fighters, and could end up on the canvas like he was against Jorge Linares. Lomachenko is a technically skilled fighter, but his chin is no better than a lot of guys. He’s human, in other words. That’s the whole problem that Lomachenko will have when he fights against Davis. He’s going to get hit with shots that he’s never felt before as a pro or as an amateur.
