The genuine antipathy between America’s two most popular and divisive boxers was laid bare on Thursday when Gervonta Davis and Ryan Garcia each pledged to break the other’s jaw during the final press conference ahead of their fastly approaching scrap on the Las Vegas Strip.
“I touch that jaw, I’m telling you, you’re going to sleep. I promise you,” seethed Davis, the 28-year-old three-weight champion from Baltimore nicknamed Tank, from beneath a baseball cap that read I ♥ SEX. “I’ll probably break your jaw. Facts. Don’t even bring your mother or your daughter.”
Said Garcia, the 24-year-old from southern California whose matinee-idol looks have long belied his own cruel intentions between the ropes: “I just need a single shot. Just one. This one. Trust me. The left hook. When I touch anything, you’re going to sleep. I feel like I’m gonna break your jaw with a hook. I just see you on the floor with a broken jaw.”
The two-way trash talk, which extended deep into both fighters’ camps throughout Thursday’s rollicking proceedings, lent additional spice to an event that hardly needs it: two unbeaten knockout merchants early in their primes, represented by different companies and broadcasters, putting aside their differences to make the crossover fight the people have clamored for and their down-bad sport desperately needs. For once the promotional bluster rings true. The summit meeting between Davis and Garcia on Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena is the year’s most anticipated bout and one of the biggest matches that can be made today.
Call it boxing’s first Gen-Z megafight, borne from a protracted feud that’s largely unfolded on social media over two years and leaning into a future where followers are listed on the tale of the tape alongside height, weight and reach.
But it’s also a credible throwback to a time when the best went across the street to fight the best regardless of promotional affiliation, rather than handpicking inferior opponents to inflate their win-loss ledger. And its significance only redoubles with the once-rosy prospects of a heavyweight unification blockbuster between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk diminishing by the day and the even longer-awaited pound-for-pound showdown between Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr withering on the vine.
Davis, who sprang from abject poverty in west Baltimore and became the sport’s second-youngest world champion at just 22 years old, has moved the needle like few other US prize-fighters in recent memory, capturing belts at 126lbs, 130lbs and 135lbs while selling out arenas from coast to coast. A southpaw touched with concussive power in both hands known for overcoming quiet starts with a deliberate stalking style, he is undefeated in 28 professional fights with 26 knockouts and an emerging mainstream attraction with more than 4.7m followers on Instagram. When he broke the live gate record at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center last year, Madonna watched from ringside.
Garcia has been dogged by critics for his good looks, luxury-brand endorsements and enormous social-media reach – upwards of 9.6m Instagram followers with 5.3m more on TikTok – as a pretty-faced influencer from Orange County who happens to box. But in the seven years since the 15-time amateur champion entered the paying ranks, he’s stopped 20 of the 23 opponents he’s faced inside the distance, including all but one of the last 19. The winning cocktail has been straightforward enough: blinding hand speed and a devastating left hook. Questions over his mettle were answered when he came off the deck to stop Britain’s Luke Campbell, the 2012 Olympic champion who had gone the distance with Vasyl Lomachenko. But Campbell, for all he’s accomplished, is no Davis.
Both fighters’ formidable knockout records, say nothing of their unconcealed disdain for one another, suggest the affair won’t last the scheduled 12-round duration. While Davis’ professional resume holds up better to close scrutiny, the plain fact is each man is still in search of a signature win and will be in with the best opponent of his career on Saturday night. It’s a risky proposition for both at this stage of their journeys and credit is due to each for taking it on – even if a cynic might ask whether the abrupt urgency to get the negotiations over the line was related to the looming prospect of Davis’ incarceration at a 5 May sentencing hearing following his guilty plea to four counts stemming from a hit-and-run crash in November 2020 which left four people hospitalized, including a pregnant woman.
Surprisingly, or not, you won’t hear anything about those troubling underpinnings on the multi-part docuseries hawking the fight that’s currently airing on Showtime, the cable network broadcasting the fight via pay-per-view in the US. But if that’s the uncomfortable moral bargain that was necessary to get these bitter rivals into the ring together, it’s one that most boxing fans would leap at. That doesn’t mean it was easy.
The biggest sticking point was the weight. Garcia’s two most recent outings came at 140lbs, where Davis has fought just once in his career. Their compromise for Saturday was a catchweight of 136lbs, one pound above the lightweight division limit. The contract also includes a same-day weigh-in on Saturday with a rehydration clause, stating that neither fighter can have gained more than 10lbs from when they stepped on the scales on Friday afternoon, lest they incur steep financial penalties.
Oscar De La Hoya, who promotes Garcia, took a prod at Davis’s fastidious demands over the weight issue during Thursday’s presser, insisting that it “points to a team looking to protect their fighter. ... Nothing feels worse than your team not believing in you.”
Leonard Ellerbe, the longtime Floyd Mayweather lapdog who promoted Davis until the fighter’s departure from Mayweather Promotions last year but was present on Thursday in a advisory role, was quick to clap back at De La Hoya in profane terms before settling on an unapologetic tack.
“We’re the A-side of the situation,” Ellerbe said. “That’s how the A-side carries itself.”
On the whole, there’s been no shortage of self-congratulations among boxing’s power brokers throughout fight week for having delivered the quality of main event that should be far more routine. All involved parties have parroted a similar line: how they hope Saturday’s fight will offer a proof of concept that forces a change in boxing’s matchmaking politics and encourages similar headline-grabbing matchups. In reality, it’s all come back to a sales pitch for Saturday night, where network hopes remain quietly optimistic that more than a million US homes will buy the fight for $85 a pop.
“It’s not often in today’s age you see two young fighters both undefeated, both in their prime, step in the ring together,” said Tom Brown, the TGB Promotions president with a piece of the action on Davis’s side. “This fight will be an instant classic, an all-out war, a Hagler versus Hearns. The good thing is with Tank Davis, we have Hagler.”
