By Aragon Garcia: Floyd Mayweather Jr is now saying that Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis the “Top Dog” after he beat fading fighter Leo Santa Cruz last Saturday night at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.
The fight was on Showtime pay-per-view, and Mayweather is now also saying that there’s a reason why Tank is on pay-per-view. Without Santa Cruz, Tank would have been back fighting on regular Showtime and not PPV.
Mayweather didn’t bother to explain what he meant by calling Tank the “Top dog” because he hasn’t proven that he’s the top dog at 130 or 135. He’s the secondary WBA lightweight champion. The champion with the more prestigious WBA 135-lb title is Teofimo Lopez.
Mayweather calling Tank the ‘Top Dog”
“Tank is the top dog, Tank is on PPV for a reason. Tank is where he’s at for a reason,” said Mayweather at the post-fight news conference last Saturday. “So we don’t want to come up here and call different names out.
“What we want to do is let him [Davis] go home, enjoy himself with his family, his daughter, his team, and then we’ll talk about that probably 20-30 days from now,” said Floyd.
The 43-year-old Mayweather is doing Tank no favors by trying to embellish his position in the 130 and 135-lb weight classes by referring to him as the “Top dog.” He’s not the top dog. You can make a strong argument that Tank isn’t even the #2 dog at super featherweight and lightweight.
Davis is a good fighter, but he’s proven himself as #1. To do that, the soon to be 26-year-old Tank will need to beat these fighters:
Super featherweight
- Miguel Berchelt
- Oscar Valdez
- Jamel Herring
- Shakur Stevenson
- Rene Alvarado
- Joseph ‘Jo Jo’ Diaz
Lightweight
- Teofimo Lopez
- Vasily Lomachenko
- Ryan Garcia
- Devin Haney
- Luke Campbell
Of those two lists, this writer sees two fighters from each list that he would pick as the favorite to defeat Tank Davis.
Gervonta can fight who he wants
“I’m putting him in the same position so that he can do the same thing that I did; fight when he wants to fight, fight who he wants to fight,” said Mayweather in an ominous comment.
“He’s the top dog. And he going to keep going out there proving to the world that he is the best,” said Mayweather.
Mayweather’s comment about Tank Davis being able to fight “who he wants” paints a bleak situation for fans, which may continue to see him facing old-timers that are no threat to beating him.
While Mayweather thinks it’s a good thing that Tank can cherry-pick his opponents in the same way he did during his career, that’s not a good thing. We’ve seen Tank fly through the first seven years of his career without facing one talented opponent.
Yes, Davis has fought a couple of B-level fighters in Santa Cruz and Jose Pedraza, but he’s gone through seven years without fighting a super talented A-level fighter, and it’s unclear when he will.
For Tank to be the real “Top dog” and not just a pseudo version, he needs to get busy fighting the best at 130 and 135. If Mayweather Promotions choose to continue to match Davis against older fighters past their prime, his career will be stunted.
Right now, Davis hasn’t achieved what he could have if he had been fighting the best right off the bat like Teofimo Lopez is doing.