Gervonta Davis says he’s taking the remainder of this year off and will be fighting in early 2024. The secondary WBA lightweight champion Tank Davis wants to get “My personal life together.”
Tank (29-0, 27 KOs) recently got out of jail for violating the terms of his home detention for his hit-and-run accident in 2020. Instead of staying at his coach Calvin Ford’s place for the home detention, Tank wound up doing the last 44 in jail and was set free on July 22nd.
Gervonta has been out long enough to get in shape for another fight, but he’s decided to rest up for the remainder of 2023.
Given the kind of opposition Tank has been fighting for the last few years, he wouldn’t need much of a training camp to fight in November or December if the motivation was there.
Tank fans are disappointed he won’t take another fight this year because his last one against social media influencer Ryan Garcia wasn’t competitive last April.
People want to see Gervonta start fighting high-caliber opposition, like Shakur Stevenson, Teofimo Lopez, Devin Haney, Frank Martin & William Zepeda, rather than the tomato cans that his promoters are matching him against one after another.
It’s not likely that we’ll see Gervonta fight any of those guys because they’d be a threat to beating him, and that runs counter to the way he’s been matched. Fans on social media have been joking that Tank’s next fight will be a rematch with Ryan Garcia because the fight brought in so many PPV buys. At this point, it wouldn’t be surprising.
There had been talk about the 28-year-old Tank fighting Isaac ‘Pitbull’ Cruz in a rematch, and he’s likely the guy he’ll be fighting at the top of the year in 2024.
When Tank does return, it would be nice if he resisted the impulse to fight Pitbull Cruz again and instead start fighting the guys that fans want to see him against.
Tank could be so much more popular than he is if he fought better opposition instead of guys lesser fighters like Ryan Garcia, Rolly Romero, Pitbull Cruz, Hector Garcia, and Yuriorkis Gamboa.
Mayweather Promotions has done a great job of turning Tank Davis into a star without ever putting him at risk against meaningful opposition.
It’s arguably bad for the sport because other promoters could see the success that Mayweather Promotions have had with Tank and choose to match their fighters in the same way, putting them in against exclusively beatable guys and promoting their mismatches to the hilt.
