By Dan Ambrose: Last Saturday’s fight between Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis and Ryan Garcia reportedly did a little over 1.2 million pay-per-view buys in the U.S, making it the most successful PPV event in the U.S since the Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennadiy Golovkin rematch in 2018.
Keith Idec is reporting the news of the Davis-Garcia event on Showtime & DAZN doing approximately 1.2M buys in the U.S. It’s great to know the fight did well, and it obviously would have done even more significant numbers if not for piracy with the illegal streams.
It wouldn’t be surprising that the fight would have done over 2 million PPV buys without piracy and, more importantly, if the price were a more reasonable $60 than the wallet-deflating $84.99.
In hindsight, that was a bad move on the organizer’s part because it scared away a lot of boxing fans, especially since there was nothing else on the card other than the main event that was halfway interesting.
The co-feature bout between David Morrell and Yamaguchi Falcao was a train wreck, and there was zero appeal in the rematch between 16-loss journeyman Gabe Rosado and Bektemir Melikuziev.
It would be understandable to charge fans $84.99 if the card were stacked and the event was more evenly matched with Tank fighting Shakur Stevenson instead of the social media influencer Ryan Garcia with his 10M Instagram followers.
There’s no word whether PBC, Showtime & Golden Boy will elect to stage a Tank Davis vs. Ryan Garcia rematch, but given how the fight ended, it will be difficult to justify an immediate second fight without some kind of controversy.
If they stage an immediate rematch, it will look like a pathetic money-grab attempt in the eyes of the fans, and they’ll avoid purchasing the fight.
What needs to happen is for Ryan to defeat a credible opponent or two at 140 to show boxing fans that he’s come back from his loss so they can take him seriously as a viable threat to beating Gervonta in the rematch.
“The fact that he gave into a body shot kind of tells you that rehydration definitely wasn’t a factor said Roy Jones Jr on his channel on whether the 10-lb rehydration clause played a factor in the Tank Davis vs. Ryan Garcia fight.
“He was not slow, he was not lethargic, he had great energy, and a lot of people think he didn’t get hit with a good shot,” Roy Jr said about Ryan. “Not true. He [Tank] caught him right after he threw a punch. That’s the worse time for you to get hit after you’re throwing a punch.
“He hit him, and as soon as it made contact, that arm snatched down. That’s not something you think to do. That’s a reaction to, ‘I’m hurt,’ and then he immediately took off that way [in reverse],” said Jones.
