Gervonta Davis training with Floyd Mayweather, preparing for Santa Cruz

By Boxing News - 08/06/2020 - Comments

By Allan Fox: Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis looked good on Wednesday, working out with Floyd Mayweather Jr on the mitts as he prepares for his 12-round bout against Leo Santa Cruz on October 24 on Showtime pay-per-view.

Sports agent Alonzo Earle posted a clip of the 25-year-old Davis (23-0, 22 KOs) working out with Floyd last night, looking good and receiving helpful advice.

Floyd, 43, wants to get Tank ready for what he’ll be dealing with when he gets inside the ring with WBA Super World 130-pound champion Santa Cruz (37-1-1, 19 KOs) in two months from now in October. Santa vs. Davis is taking place at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut.

Mayweather failed to copy Santa Cruz’s style

The one thing that Tank’s boxing fans don’t realize is that working out on mitts can only help so much. It’s not going to prepare Tank to deal with 1,000 punches being thrown at him by the 31-year-old Santa Cruz on October 24, and it WON’T help him take the hard shots during the contest.

Some boxing fans might argue that Mayweather is putting himself in the position to hog the glory from Tank and his regular trainer if wins. The casual fans will say afterward, ‘Yeah, it was the work that Tank put in with Mayweather that helped him beat Santa Cruz.

The reality would be far different. Davis was already viewed as the favorite to beat Santa Cruz long before the retired 43-year-old Mayweather Jr decided to do a little training with him on mitts and giving advice.

Hitting mitts isn’t going to win the fight for Davis. For him to win, he’s going to need to deal with the high volume punching by Santa Cruz on October 24. If Tank can’t handle that, he’ll get beaten, and Mayweather will likely take criticism for being one of his helpers.

Image: Gervonta Davis training with Floyd Mayweather, preparing for Santa Cruz

The real question to ask is, where is Tank’s full-time trainer? Is he going to be replaced by Mayweather, and who gets the credit after Tank beats Santa Cruz? Mayweather or his full-time trainer? It would be interesting to know how Tank’s regular trainer feels about Mayweather inserting himself into the situation by training him.

Santa Cruz will be throwing a lot of punches

If you’re Tank Davis, you’re better off having someone else hold the mitts rather than Mayweather because he’s doing things that are contrary to how Santa Cruz will fight. Also, if you look at the video of Davis’ workout, Mayweather is standing on the outside, holding his left arm out in front of him to push off and force Tank to stay on the outside.

Unfortunately, that’s not how Santa Cruz fights, and it has never been. He tends to pressure and crowd his opponents in close or at a regular distance. He NEVER holds his left arm out in front of him to push off on his opponents to keep them at a long-range.

That’s an old Mayweather trick that he’s used for many years. So in other words, Mayweather isn’t doing an excellent job of copying the type of fighting style that Santa Cruz typically uses, and will probably employ on October 24.

In a nutshell, Davis’ workout with Mayweather probably didn’t help him other than keeping him in shape to have someone hold mitts.

Other than that, Mayweather didn’t follow the type of style that Santa Cruz will be using against Tank, and he didn’t help him as much as he could have if he studied Leo’s fighting style BEFORE the workout. It was the same old Mayweather with the mitts that he always is, and it wasn’t dialed in for the type of style that Tank will be dealing with against Santa Cruz.

YouTube video

Will Mayweather get blamed if Tank loses?

If Tank gets beaten by Santa Cruz, it would be refreshing for Mayweather to raise his hand and accept part of the blame for the loss by saying that he didn’t do his job with his advice and his mitt workouts.

Will that happen? I seriously doubt it. The likely person that will get the blame is Tank’s regular trainer instead of Mayweather, and that would be sad. When a fighter loses, the whole team should be getting equal responsibility unless it’s a situation where the guy isn’t working hard.

For example, Andy Ruiz Jr decided to get fat, skip workouts, and slack off going into his rematch with Anthony Joshua last December. That wasn’t any fault of Manny Robles, his trainer at the time. He did his best to train Ruiz Jr on the days that he showed up at the gym. Nevertheless, Robles was still sacked afterward when Ruiz lost to Joshua.

Hopefully, for Tank’s case, he doesn’t waste too much time working out with Mayweather because he’ll develop a lot of bad habits that won’t help him against Santa Cruz.

Image: Gervonta Davis training with Floyd Mayweather, preparing for Santa Cruz

When Tank Davis needs is a quality trainer that will have each workout honed in on the type of things that he’ll be seeing from Santa Cruz. Using Mayweather with his seemingly permanently fixed style of working out, it’s useless for Tank and a complete time waster.

 

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