Bernard Hopkins “commends” Tank Davis splitting with Mayweather

By Boxing News - 01/30/2023 - Comments

By Chris Williams: Bernard Hopkins says he “commends” Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis for leaving Floyd Mayweather Jr to get the big fight he wanted against Ryan Garcia on April 15th on Showtime PPV. Although the fight has yet to be signed, it’s expected to happen.

Bernard says the WBA ‘regular’ lightweight champion Tank Davis (28-0, 26 KOs) had to cross the Oscar De La Hoya pond to get the massive fight against Ryan.

For Floyd, it had to have been a crushing disappointment for him to lose Tank Davis from his Mayweather Promotions stable because that was the only big start that he had.

Would Tank have stayed if Mayweather put him in with popular fighters like Ryan, Devin Haney, Vasyl Lomachenko, Frank Martin, Shakur Stevenson, and Teofimo Lopez?

Hopkins says Tank Davis wouldn’t let the “soap opera” stuff between Mayweather and De La Hoya affect him.

Tank has to break the chains

“You look at Tank Davis and why he has to show that he had moves in his life & his career that he got bashed for doing. Leaving Floyd Mayweather to cross the pond, especially the Oscar De La Hoya pond,”  said Bernard Hopkins to Fight Hub TV.

“Can you understand the backlash you’d get for doing that? I commend Tank for saying, ‘This is my career. You had yours. I respect you for buying me a chain, buying me this, buying me that, and taking me on the jet.’ All that’s great.

“I’m only going by his interview.  You’ve seen it, and I’ve seen it. Tank sat back and said, ‘Guess what? ‘Thank you, Floyd Mayweather, for all the things you gave me. If the intention was that you were just looking out for me, but I got an opportunity to fight this big fight [against Ryan Garcia] and this soap opera s**t between you and Oscar for all these years, I’m not going to let it affect me.’ That’s my interpretation.

“Tank wants to do the fight, but he had to break away from the chains from someone he still respects and respected then and felt like, ‘I’m going to do him wrong if I do this.’ Somebody and Tank had many conversations where he said, ‘I got to do what I got to do. This is my career.’

“Once you get one chance to go around a career and take the chance to box for 20 years like Bernard Hopkins, you can’t risk that. You got to take the opportunity to chop at the bit if you can and let everybody else do the work that’s behind you and take care of the details so you can do what you do best.

“Tank Davis wants to do what he do best, and he wants to be the most popular fighter right now, not only in numbers because we do live in a social media world where you have to respect that because, yeah, skills pay the bills, but customers help too,” said Hopkins.

Gervonta-Ryan will motivate other fighters

“They both have customers. We know what Ryan has,” said Hopkins. “We know what Tank has. We need a fight. We’re thirsty in boxing for a fight of this magnitude. Anyone that denies that is crazy. There’s a lot of stuff out there that people like, or they don’t.

“Do you know what’s going to bring the other super fights that are waiting in limbo to see if they want to take their own careers and own decisions in their hands and make the fights like Tank is doing?” said Hopkins when asked what it’s going to take to make the Errol Spence Jr vs. Terence Crawford fight.

“It’s really managing the traffic that’s going to start to trigger other fighters. Bud Crawford, that fight didn’t happen with him and Spence. What they’re going to do when they see the door open? Them young fighters are going to sit back, and they’ll say, ‘No, wait, they need us. Don’t go nowhere.’

“That was good three, four, five years ago when they were getting 12 round money four-rounders. Al Haymon can’t pay them that no more. That been stopped, and they all scattered now. ‘Hey, can you let me in?’ And you got to remember. Every time you still fight if that contract can still live by the date it expired, you got to still give that man 35, 25% of your money.

“They’re starting to realize now that I got to give Al my money? Yes. He’s not a promoter; he’s an adviser. He got around the Muhammad Ali act that I stood up for that made that law. Now you got duped because he’s under an advisor, which the Ali act doesn’t cover.

“Now you’re over there with Arum; you’re over here with us, you’re over here with that. The well dried up. You’ve got this big house. You’ve got all these cars. That’s when stuff was good. You’re getting overpaid.

“You got the maintenance, you got bills, and you got taxes at the wrong time, and then Covid hit. That exposed a lot of frauds. If your money ain’t right, then it’s funny, and a lot of people’s money is funny.

“I’m still living off the interest. I’ve got my Costco card,” said Hopkins.

YouTube video