By Sam Volz: Andre Ward believes Ryan Garcia’s best chance of beating Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis will come down to whether his chin will hold up under the firepower of the Baltimore native on April 22.
Like many boxing fans, Ward isn’t sure if Ryan (23-0, 19 KOs) will be able to withstand the heavy artillery from Tank Davis (28-0, 26 KOs) in their scheduled twelve-round main event fight on Showtime PPV at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The lack of experience that the Golden Boy promoted Ryan has is the biggest problem. Instead of working his way up to the fight against Gervonta by taking on contenders, Ryan started campaigning for the match while still facing the type of lesser opposition than most prospects face.
Ryan has shown no desire to pick up experience against contenders, as he just wanted the Tank fight, which is why the astute boxing fans believe that Kingry’s only focus has been a big money cash-out from the very start.
When Ryan turned down the recent tune-up fight against Mercito Gesta, many people believed he was just cashing out against Tank and didn’t risk losing that payday before he was exposed as a phony.
“The question for Ryan Garcia is can he take a punch?” said Andre Ward to Fight Hub TV about Kingry’s match against favorite Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis on April 22nd.
“When Gervonta lands, can he take that, keep his composure, and keep trying to execute his game plan? If he does that, then he’s got a shot.
“It’s not going to be easy for either guy, and I don’t think that fight goes the distance no matter which way you swing it,” said Ward.
Ryan has a puncher’s chance against Tank Davis, but that’s about it. His lack of experience and bad fundamentals will make it easy for Tank to score a fairly quick knockout. The only interesting thing about this fight is watching the promoters orchestrate a needless rematch.
It will be interesting to see how they justify a rematch after Tank knocks out Ryan on April 22nd, but it’s utterly predictable that there will be a second fight for money purposes.
The 5’11” Garcia has only fought one top-tier opponent during his seven-year professional career, Luke Campbell, and that was a fight in which he was knocked down in the second.
Ryan would have been knocked out if Luke had jumped on him immediately rather than backing off as if he wanted to take his time. Any other fighter would have finished Ryan off on the spot, but Luke wasn’t a great professional. A good contender like Shakur Stevenson, Keyshawn Davis, Vasily Lomachenko, or Frank Martin would have finished Ryan immediately.
