Oscar De La Hoya: “Ryan Garcia is new face of PPV, Gervonta only did 200K a few times”

Image: Oscar De La Hoya: "Ryan Garcia is new face of PPV, Gervonta only did 200K a few times"
By Boxing News - 04/29/2023 - Comments

By Allan Fox: Oscar De La Hoya is proclaiming Ryan Garcia as the “new face of PPV” following his successful mega-fight against Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis last weekend on DAZN & Showtime pay-per-view. The event pulled in approximately 1.2 million buys from U.S. audiences, and De La Hoya feels that Ryan (23-1, 19 KOs) is the reason for the success.

De La Hoya points out that before his fight with Ryan Garcia, Tank Davis (29-0, 27 KOs) had only hit 200,000 buys on several occasions. But with Ryan’s help, Tank hit the one million+ mark on PPVs. Ryan is the one with the huge following, not Tank.

It’s great that Tank can sell out arenas in Baltimore, Maryland, but he’s NOT a PPV attraction, and it’s doubtful that he ever will be because he avoids fighting the best. He’s another Terence Crawford in that respect.

Oscar could be right about Ryan being the new “face of PPV,” but we’ll only know if he proves it in his next fight. Ryan has 10 million followers on Instagram, and it’s believed that those are the ones that purchased his fight with Tank Davis to bring it to one million buys.

Many hardcore boxing fans on social media were opposed to the idea of paying $85 to watch Ryan fight Tank on PPV. Gervonta’s ex-promoters at Mayweather Promotions and PBC likely believe that Tank is the reason for why the fight pulled in one million buys, but it’s hard to agree to that when he was only pulling in 200K before this match.

If Tank Davis is the “face of PPV,” he’ll show that in his next fight, but that will be hard to do if he fights another cream puff like he’d been doing most of his career.

Tim Bradley states that Tank hasn’t fought the best because he’s following the Floyd Mayweather Jr blueprint of facing exclusively soft opposition for easy money. The fans aren’t fools. They won’t purchase Tank’s fights in huge numbers if he’s fighting soft jobs like Rolando ‘Rolly’Romero, Hector Garcia, Isaac Cruz, Mario Barrios, and Leo Santa Cruz.

Tank Davis is calling himself the “new face of boxing,” but there’s a huge difference between giving yourself a pseudo-title and being the “face of PPV.” I’m sure that’s something Tank Davis would prefer to be, but he can’t do that if he’s avoiding talented fighters like Shakur Stevenson, Devin Haney, Frank Martin, Regis Prograis, Subriel Matias, and Josh Taylor.