By Sean Jones: #1 WBA Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero is warning secondary WBA lightweight champion Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis not to back out of their still-to-be-scheduled fight.
Rolly, 26, is mandatory for Gervonta’s WBA ‘regular’ 135-lb title, so he’s in a position where he must defend against him if he doesn’t want to be stripped of his title by the sanctioning body.
Gervonta, 27, isn’t expected to pull out of the fight with the unbeaten Rolly (14-0, 12 KOs) because it’s an in-house fight for his promoters at Mayweather Promotions.
Moreover, Rolly will do all the hard work of promoting the fight with his trash-talking ability.
Gervonta is completely lacking in his ability to promote his fights with his interviews and trash-talking, which is why his promoter Floyd Mayweather Jr. frequently does most of the talking for him.
For this fight, Gervonta and Mayweather can sit back and let Rolly do all the promoting in a one-man show, entertaining the media like Conor McGregor did the heavy-lifting for Floyd with his gift of gab for their fight in 2017.
Rolly: Tank has bullied 126-pounders
“I’m back, and I’m mandatory, and the fight has to happen because if it doesn’t, he’s clearly a f*** p****,” said Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero to Fighthype on his title shot against Tank Davis.
“Both of those mother f**** were lucky I wasn’t in the ring that night. I could knock them both out at the same time,” said Rolly on his thoughts on the Gervonta vs. Isaac ‘Pitbull’ Cruz fight on December 5th.
“You know I truly believe this s***. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it,” said Rolly. “I thought it was a good fight. I thought Tank won. Everybody over here said Isaac Cruz won are just a biased dumbass.
“But did he do some efficient stuff? Yeah. Did he make Tank look truly inferior to what he actually is? Yeah.
“I mean, you make an entire career bullying 126-pounders like [Jose] Pedraza weight-drained, [Mario] Barrios weight drained, little [Leo] Santa Cruz a 122-pounder, [Hugo] Ruiz a 122-pounder,” said Rolly about Tank Davis always having the advantage over his opponents.
“You were going to fight Abner Mares, a 126-pounder. Even Isaac Cruz is a small dude, but he’s a small dude that’s tough, you know? So it just shows,” said Rolly.
Tank has been matched up against many smaller fighters, who were at a disadvantage against him.
“When Gervonta did move up to 140, he fought a badly weighed drained, light-hitting secondary WBA champion Mario Barrios instead of the undisputed four-belt champion Josh Taylor.
It was a weak move on Tank’s part to face Barrios rather than Taylor, but he’d already shown his unwillingness to face the best by electing not to battle Vasily Lomachenko for years.
Now that Tank is back at 135, he’s still choosing not to mix it up with Lomachenko, Ryan Garcia, George Kambosos, and Devin Haney.
Tank’s promoter Floyd Mayweather Jr has compartmentalized him, sectioning him off from the elite-level fighters at lightweight, and matching him against obscure contenders, and played out former championed long in the tooth.
If Tank were an NFL team, he would be competing against a bunch of 8-8 teams, some of which were staffed by over-the-hill players.
Rolando says experts picking him
“Now he’s going to fight a massive dude because I’m pretty big for my weight if not one of the biggest people in my weight and by far the hardest puncher in the world,” said Rolly about Tank taking on a big guy that won’t be weight drained like his past opponents.
“Now we’re really going to see what the f*** goes on because I know what’s going to happen. The casuals don’t know what’s going to happen, but the boxing experts truly know what’s going to happen.
“Everyone knows what’s going to happen, and the Isaac Cruz fight just proved it,” said Rolly in hinting that he’s going to stop Gervonta. “It’s just Internet trolls. They don’t take it seriously,” said Rolly when asked about the boxing fans that don’t believe he has a chance of beating Tank Davis.
“Let’s say it like this. Everybody that’s been in the ring with me and Tank, they’re taking me. Everybody that has seen both of us spar, I’m talking about a lot of people over there at Floyd’s, they’re taking me.
“They know what the hell I’ve got. At the end of it, we’re both punchers, right? Who is the hardest puncher? You haven’t been hit by both of us, but I’m bigger and the harder puncher,” said Rolly.
It’s hard to know whether Rolly will beat Tank because he’s not fought enough quality opponents to get a good gauge of what he’s capable of doing against a top-tier lightweight.
Indeed, Rolly hasn’t faced one top-tier contender during his entire six-year professional career. The best guys Rolly has faced as a pro are these less than stellar opponents:
- Avary Sparrow
- Anthony Yigit
- Jackson Marinez
- Arturs Ahmetovs
I guess you can’t blame Rolly for fighting so many mediocre opponents during his career, as he’s promoted by the same guys as Tank Davis, so it’s par for the course that he would have similar fodder opposition fed to him.
Gervonta lacks skills, says Rolly
“He doesn’t even have skills. He gets punched in the face every single fight,” said Rolly about Gervonta. “[Yuriorkis] Gamboa had both of his eyes shut and one of his legs broken from the second round.
“There hasn’t been a fight where he hasn’t had his a** beat,” Rolly said about the punishment Tank has beaten lately. “I’m talking about with an actual competitor. Santa Cruz was beating the s*** out of him until you know. Santa Cruz was landing everything he wanted.
“Barrios, the weight drain kicked in after six or seven rounds. Pedraza, that fight was difficult [for Tank Davis] until the weight drain kicked in.
“He looked like s***. He gets hit by everybody and then lands one lucky punch against a smaller dude or weight drained opponent.
“Y’all can hype him up all y’all want, but I see him for what he is. It has to happen. I’m mandatory. If it doesn’t happen, we clearly know who is a pussy here,” said Rolly Romero about Tank.
Gervonta has a lot of skills, speed, and power, but he lacks common sense. For example, in every one of Tank’s recent fights, he’s retreated to the ropes and tried to immediate his promoter Floyd Mayweather Jr. with his shoulder roll defense.
Unfortunately for Tank, his defense is nowhere near as good as Floyd’s, and he’s been getting clobbered by his opponents.
In Gervonta’s last fight against Pitbull Cruz, his faulty ring IQ caused him to take a career’s worth of punishment in getting nailed repeatedly by powerful hooks to the head.
In the championship rounds, it got so bad for Tank; he turned tail and ran for the last four rounds, refusing to hold his ground and looking frightened of his opponent.
It was like Tank was being chased around the ring by a REAL Pitbull dog, as he looked scared that he would get ripped apart by the formidable Mexican warrior.
That fight WASN’T Tank’s finest hour, and he made matters worse by playing for sympathy after the battle by showing his slightly swollen left hand.
“I hurt my left hand in probably the sixth round,” Davis complained bitterly after the fight. I felt that later in the fight, he [Pitbull] was breaking down, but I hurt my hand so that I couldn’t get him out of there,” said Gervonta.
Tank sounded like a politician using doubletalk after the fight and making no sense.
The scores were 115–113, 115–113, and 116–112, all for Tank. Sean Jones had it for Pitbull Cruz 115-113. Tank looked done after four rounds, and he was the one that was breaking down, not the other way around.
