By Dan Ambrose: Stephen Edwards predicts a knockout victory for Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis over Hector Luis Garcia on January 7th on Showtime pay-per-view.
Trainer Edwards sees the 5’8″ Hector Garcia (16-0, 10 KOs) as being too small for the 5’5 1/2″ Tank Davis (27-0, 25 KOs), even though he’s taller than him by almost three inches and has a two-inch reach advantage.
Hector is moving from super featherweight to battle Davis in the main event at the Capitol One Arena in Washington, D.C.
Davis is viewed as the clear favorite, but Edwards feels that you can’t count out Garcia because he’s coming off two big wins over Chris Colbert and Roger Gutierrez.
“I favor Tank in the fight, but it’s still a fight,” said Stephen Edwards to Fighthype about the Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis vs. Hector Garcia fight on January 7th. “You got to have a certain amount of optimism and self esteem when your guy is taking a fight.
“Hector Garcia is coming off a big victory over the kid from New York [Chris Colbert], and he’s got a hot trainer right now in Bob Santos. He’s an Olympian and has got pedigree.
“I think he’s a little too small for Tank. A little too straight up in the air, but it’s a fight. Let’s see what happens. I think Tank clips him. Tank is going to clip him between six and eight.
“Gervonta is one of the best fighters in the world, whether you guys know it or not. He’s a great fighter. He may not have. He might not have the matchmaking that everybody wants to have as far as he’s not fighting to be a great fighter.
“He might not be taking the kind of fights that the public wants to see him take. I’m just talking about straight ability. I’m not getting into all of that because it’s the business side of it, and it’s a business and a sport.
“I’m talking about straight ability. There are not ten fighters in the world better than him [Gervonta]. Everything is underrated. His jab is underrated. Everybody is saying he’s all left hand. His right hand is underrated.
“His poise is underrated; his chin is underrated; his condition is underrated. That boy can fight. He can go. Unfortunately, he hasn’t been in with the A-level guys of his talent. So we haven’t seen it with them.
“He’s one of the few dudes that if I had a lightweight right now, that’s the guy you don’t want to fight. A lot of those other guys will outbox you, but he’ll put you in a body bag.
“He can hurt you. He’s a very explosive fighter, he’s mean, and he’ll try to hurt you with the boxing skills on top of it, and he’s got conditioning. You don’t see him running out of gas,” Edwards said about Gervonta.
“I’m telling you. That boy can fight. People criticize him, but the only thing you can criticize is that he may not have fought the Haneys, the Shakur’s, and those kinds of guys.
“I know they’re with a different promotional company. I don’t want to get into that. But just in terms of ability, there are three fighters that move the needle with their ability.
“I’m not talking about impressing you as far as shutting guys out in fights. I’m talking about three fighters in boxing that give you the athleticism, they give you the talent, and after they outbox you, they give you the brutality and the violence of it.
“You know who that is? Jaron Ennis, ‘Monster’ Inoue, and Tank Davis, Those are the three guys that combine that violence with the freaky talent. A lot of dudes are talented, but they don’t take chances. They just go ahead and win a decision.
“Then there are a lot of guys that are punchers, let’s say a [Artur] Beterbiev, but they don’t have that off-the-chart talent where you look at them and be like, ‘Oh my God, this is a freak talent.’ Those three have got both. Tank is a special dude, and he can fight,” said Edwards.