It wasn’t the result Golden Boy Promotions wanted, but Ryan Garcia’s loss to Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis wasn’t a complete bust.
The 24-year-old Los Angelan, who holds a record of 23-1 (19), was knocked out by a body shot from Davis 29-0 (27) at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada on Saturday night.
Garcia was down in rounds two and seven. The scores at the time of the stoppage were 58-56, 59-56 and 59-55, all in favour of southpaw Davis, 28, who hails from Detroit, Michigan.
Golden Boy Promotions executive Bernard Hopkins praised his fighter Garcia for rolling the dice in a battle of the unbeaten and promised his guy would be back.
“I think he will be back sooner rather than later. And I think [right now is] the opportunity to correct a lot of things that he brings from the amateurs. And one of those things is defence, and based on how many rounds the fight lasted he has to work on his defence,” Hopkins said FightHype.
“His defence needs to be tighter. That may not be so easy and he may never make it, he may have to live with it all his life. If Ryan Garcia asks me what I see, I’ll tell him that his defence needs to be tighter and that he needs to, at least, make an honest attempt to review it and in the future, he can’t fight so upright when he goes in to trade because he is very exposed. Those are little things that will cost you later and are already taking their toll on you today. And they took a toll on him at that important moment.
“I believe he has what it takes to put this loss behind him and achieve greatness. But not now. Today is not great. So let’s work towards that. He’s still young and he can come back. From what I saw in the locker room, he still has that hunger. He was upset, he was apologising to everyone. But I told him that he doesn’t have to apologise to us, that he knows what he has to do, that I’m with him and that Golden Boy is also with him.”
The fight reportedly sold 1.2 million buys on pay-per-view and delivered a live gate of $22.8 million. Those figures are yet to be independently verified.
In the wake of the bout, Davis anointed himself the new face of boxing.
“I’m definitely the face of boxing. Abso-fucking-lutely!” he said.
“I didn’t think that body shot would end it, but I saw his facial expression and that’s what made me take it to him.
“It was a good shot, for sure. I thought he was going to get up but I like to play mind games, so when he was looking at me, I was looking at him trying to tell him, ‘get up!’ And he just shook his head, no.”
Garcia was magnanimous in defeat.
“He just caught me with a good shot,” he said. “I don’t want to make any excuses in here. He caught me with a good shot and I just couldn’t recover and that’s it.
“He caught me with a good body shot, snuck under me and caught me good. I couldn’t breathe. I was going to get back up, but I just couldn’t get up.”
