By Dan Ambrose: Danny Garcia likes what he saw of Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis with his performance last weekend beating WBA secondary light welterweight champion Mario Barrios at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta.
Garcia liked the one-punch power that Tank (25-0, 24 KOs) showed in repeating knocking the bigger fighter Barrios down before ultimately stopping him in round eleven.
Danny says he’d like to see Tank Davis fight Gary Russell Jr at 130 if he can still make weight for that division. We don’t know yet if Tank will be returning to the super featherweight division for any important fights. My guess is Tank won’t return to 130.
The 130-lb division has emptied recently, with the top guys moving up to 135 to try and cash in with the big-money fights in that weight class.
Tank’s promoter Floyd Mayweather Jr clarified last Saturday night that he’d only be matching him against Mayweather Promotions and PBC fighters, which rules out him returning to super featherweight.
The top guys at 130 now, Shakur Stevenson, Oscar Valdez, and Jamel Herring are all with Top Rank.
Danny Garcia wants Tank to fight Russell Jr
“Yeah, I think Gary Russell is a good fight for him, but at 130, not 135,” said Danny Garcia to Fighthype about Gervonta Davis.
“I think Gary has got the skills, but it’s a big hop. I think Gary Russell and Tank at 135 would be a good a** fight. I think if the fight makes sense.
“Tank is a big star right now, so he’s got leverage on his side,” Danny added. I don’t know what the numbers were on pay-per-view, but that determines everything.”
What’s the point of Tank fighting an aging 126-pounder like Gary Russell Jr? There’s nothing special about that fight, and it’s doubtful at Mayweather Promotions will even consider. If you look at the type of match-making they’ve done for Tank, they tend to select many pure Hispanic brawlers.
Tank’s last eleven opponents:
- Mario Barrios
- Leo Santa Cruz
- Yuriorkis Gamboa
- Ricardo Nunez
- Hugo Ruiz
- Jesus Marcelo Andres Cuellar
- Marco Antonio Macias
- Jose Pedraza
- Guillermo Avila
- Luis Sanchez
- Cristobal Cruz
It seems pretty obvious that Floyd Mayweather Jr is the one that is personally hand-picking all of Tank Davis’ opponents.
I’d be surprised if any of the other top guys with Mayweather Promotions have any say in who Tank fights.
Mayweather has got his fingerprints all over the match-making for Tank, which means we WON’T be seeing Tank Davis fight the likes of Gary Russell Jr, Shakur Stevenson, Devin Haney, or Vasily Lomachenko during his career.
Colbert not surprised Barrios lost the fight
“I can’t say, but I think me and him would be a super-fight, and I know I’d get that win,” said super featherweight contender Chris Colbert to Fighthype about a match between him and Gervonta.
“When asked if he thinks he would be given a fight against Tank Davis, Colbert shook his head. “Politics. It’s not worth nothing right now.
“That’s a fight for the future that is going to be worth good money. He’s [Davis] is going to vacate one of those belts. I don’t think he’s going to make the weight [for 130], but he’s been working hard, so you can’t put nothing past it.
“It was a hell of a fight,” Colbert said on the Davis vs. Mario Barrios fight. “Gervonta did exactly what I thought he was going to do. I told Danny he was going to starch him [Barrios].
“I thought he was going to knock him out clean because these fighters nowadays, besides Canelo, Mexican fighters, they’re not disciplined enough to stick to the game plan for the whole 12 rounds.
“They want to get brave and macho and keep swinging instead of grabbing. He [Tank] hurt you, and you want to [slug rather than hold]. This isn’t rock ’em, sock ’em robots. This is boxing.
“So I knew he [Mario Barrios] wasn’t going to be disciplined enough to keep that jab out. He did not grab not one time. How are you not going to grab not one time in the whole twelve round fight,” Colbert said.
There’s no surprise at all that Barrios lost to Tank because he was a gawdawful before this fight. In Barrios’ last contest, he went life and death with PBC undercard fighter Ryan Karl. That fight showed how limited Barrios was.
Gervonta cherry-picks opposition
“Tank? Not special, but pick and choose. To me, he’s picking and choosing,” Cobert said when asked whether Tank Davis accomplished something special by moving up to 140 to capture a world title by beating WBA secondary champion, Barrios.
“He did his thing. I don’t discredit that he’s a three-time world champion. I’m not no hater.
“Oscar Valdez is not as skilled as Tank,” said Colbert when asked if Valdez could have moved up from 130 last weekend to defeat Barrios for his WBA 140-lb title.
“Tank has got that speed, the reflexes to take away from him. He’s not just a puncher. Tank can box. He’s got great reflexes and speed. They don’t give him credit for it, but he’s got it, though.
“Yeah, but it would have been a boring fight,” Colbert said in responding to the question of whether Shakur Stevenson could have moved up to 140 to beat Barrios last Saturday night.
“Shakur is a great fighter, but he’s a boring fighter. That’s my guy. He don’t get touched at all. To a boxing spectator like one of us, we like that s***.
“But to the boxing world, they don’t like that s***. They want to see him [Stevenson] get hit too.
“He don’t get hit, which is good. No, I would not do no s*** like that, not at all,” Colbert said when asked if he would have gone up to 140 to challenge Barrios. “I ain’t dumb.”
Colbert nailed it perfectly by saying that Tank Davis cherry-picks too much for him to be given credit. Yeah, it was great that he moved up to 140 to capture a secondary world title by beating Barrios, but Tank didn’t beat one of the good fighters in that weight class. For Tank to be viewed as special, he would have needed to beat these guys:
- Regis Prograis
- Josh Taylor
- Jeremias Ponce
- Subriel Matias
- Ivan Baranchyk
- Arnold Barboza
- Shakhram Giyasov
- Gary Antuanne Russell
- Jose Zepeda
- Jose Pedraza
- Robert Easter Jr
- Viktor Postol
- Shohjahon Ergashev
- Brandun Lee
- Batyrzhan Jukembayev
- Jose Ramirez
This writer rates all of those fighters as being better than Mario Barrios, who was little more than a second-rate paper champion. Barrios won his WBA ‘regular’ title by beating Batyr Ahmedov.
If Barrios had to fight any of those fighters on my list, he would have never captured the WBA secondary strap.
That’s why you cant give Tank Davis any credit for beating him because this was a classic cherry-pick move by Mayweather Promotions by being opportunistic in fighting a weak belt-holder that Tank was capable of beating.
Oscar Valdez would likely have beaten Barrios last Saturday night easier than Tank did. Valdez would have a great game plan, and he would have needed his promoter to come to his corner to give him a pep talk the way that Tank did with Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Barrios is a limited fighter, and he would have lost a lot of guys from 130 to 140 last Saturday. This writer views Barrios as #15 in the 140-old vision. 14 fighters at 140 would have likely beaten Barrios last Saturday and done a better job than Tank.
