Ohara Davies has a bizarre excuse for his first-round knockout loss to 40-year-old Ismael Barroso last Saturday night, blaming it on excessive oxygen being pumped into his hotel room the night before their fight on January 6th at the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas.
The 31-year-old Golden Boy-promoted Davies insists on his YouTube channel that “This isn’t a conspiracy; this is actual facts” on his part, as he believes that the casinos pump oxygen onto the floors so that visitors have more energy and will want to stay awake and spend their money.
Davies’ Excuse: A Breath of Doubt
Davies’ cockamamie excuse would sound like a reasonable explanation for what happened to him if he wasn’t blasted out so quickly by Barroso (25-4-2, 23 KOs).
Ohara was literally in trouble after getting nailed by the second punch of the fight by Barroso, a big left hand that had him out on his feet. Barroso then quickly finished the job, dropping the stunned Davies (25-3, 18 KOs) twice before the contest was mercifully halted by the referee, who did the right thing of pulling him out.
Davies’ track record isn’t an impressive one, with losses to Jack Catterall and Josh Taylor. He’d never beaten any of the A-level fighters he’d fought during his career, and some fans wondered by the World Boxing Association had given him a #1 ranking in the first place.
Venting Doubts: Can This Claim Hold Air?
If casinos were pumping O2 into hotel rooms throughout the city, other fighters would have complained about the problem a long time ago. Is this a new thing?
In hindsight, it would have been better for Ohara Davies to take the high road, give Barroso his props, and not come up with his pumped oxygen theory to try to make sense of what happened to him.
If Davies is the real thing, he’ll come back from this loss and defeat whoever Golden Boy matches him up against, but that’s not likely to happen.
