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The Gervonta Davis of two or three years ago may not have been able to pull all of this off. He played a significant role in forcing a fight with Ryan Garcia that turned out to be the biggest match in boxing so far in 2023.
He promoted it extraordinarily as well as with grace and intelligence. He matured before the eyes of the world as he prepared for and then defeated Garcia in their huge 136-pound catchweight bout Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Davis’ biggest asset was his mind. He finished Garcia at 1:44 of the seventh round with a brutal body shot. Garcia immediately winced, took two steps back and then took a knee. He stayed on one knee as referee Thomas Taylor tolled the 10-count before hopping up.
Davis, who is now 29-0 with 27 knockouts, has long been a great power puncher and KO artist. On Saturday, he made good on the words that his trainer, Calvin Ford, spoke before the fight when he said Davis hadn’t ever been pushed and could do a lot more than the world had seen.
What Davis did best, though, was recognize who he was facing. Garcia was, and remains, a brilliant talent, and if it weren’t for him calling out Davis after he defeated Javier Fortuna last year, this bout may never occurred. Garcia would not let boxing politics interfere and he was resolute in his demand that Davis be his next opponent.
He, like Davis, promoted the bout expertly.
Unlike Davis, though, Garcia still has plenty of learning to do. Davis quickly realized it.
“I don’t know, I just felt like I was a step, a level above him,” Davis said at the post-fight news conference. “Everything he was doing in the ring, I was already aware of. Everything. I was aware of [what Garcia was going to do] a couple of steps before he did it. I was mostly calm. I figured I would let him make his mistakes and I would capitalize on his mistakes.”
That’s the savvy of a veteran, of a smart, well-trained fighter who has faced a variety of styles and been in pressure situations for years. Davis wasn’t caught up in the moment and he performed.
Garcia is a superb physical talent. He showed his fast hands at times, but he never landed that one big, clean shot. Davis took away his left hook and Garcia couldn’t adjust. And Garcia in past fights would often overextend and leave his chin up in the air ready to be hit like a golfer sticking his ball on a tee.
In the second round, fighting far too aggressively, Garcia whistled a right hand at Davis that Davis easily avoided. Davis then responded with a perfectly placed counter left hand that dropped Garcia.
That, in a nutshell, was the fight, and even Garcia later recognized it.
“I just wanted to make the fight a little bit more exciting,” Garcia said after the bout. “Again, that’s my inexperience at the biggest stage. I definitely messed up. I should have just made it boring, made him miss and kept him on the outside, but at one point I just decided to start throwing them. Obviously, it didn’t work in my favor.”
The talent level between the fighters is equivalent. There are things that Davis is better at than Garcia, and vice versa. But being smart and sticking to a game plan even when the situation is most intense is part of being a great, not just a good, fighter.
Davis managed to do that. He proved he’s one of the best in the world. He has been expertly coached by Ford, and he showed the poise and savvy that he hadn’t shown before. He’s grown in each of his fights, but he took his biggest step on Saturday in his biggest moment.
Going back to the second round when he dropped Garcia, Davis said he was able to stay calm amid the storm Garcia unleashed. He said Garcia never hurt him with a punch, but said at one point, Garcia “may have caught me” with a decent punch.
Davis, though, kept his wits and that is what won him the fight.
“There was no shot that caught me to the point where I felt I was in trouble,” Davis said. “I just stayed calm and I felt like he was more anxious than me. When you have someone like that, you want to stay calm at all costs. You don’t want to make a bad decision. That’s what he did. He came in rushing and got caught. I didn’t want to do that so I knew I had to stay calm.”
He finished it in the seventh — the round he predicted before the fight he would — and now sets out on a bright future. The lightweight division is loaded and at the top, there are guys like undisputed champion Devin Haney, Vasiliy Lomachenko and Shakur Stevenson for him to fight.
Davis wisely didn’t discuss his plans, showing the smarts that maybe he didn’t have just a couple of fights before.
This is an extraordinarily talented guy at his peak and he’s fighting not only with speed, power and skill but with patience, determination and IQ.
It’s a tough combination to beat.