Mature Gervonta Davis Shows Veteran Experience, Takes Advantage of Ryan Garcia’s ‘Inexperience’
The Gervonta Davis of two or three years ago probably couldn’t pull this off. He was instrumental in making the fight with Ryan Garcia the biggest fight in boxing so far in 2023.
He inspired wonderfully as well as grace and understanding. He came to a point before the eyes of the world as he prepared for and then defeated Garcia in their big 136 pound fight on Saturday at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Davis’s greatest asset was his mind. He finished Garcia at 1:44 of the seventh round with a brutal body shot. Garcia immediately moved, took two steps back and then took a knee. He stayed on one knee while the referee Thomas Macin Taylor spent the 10-count before jumping up.
Davis, now 29-0 with 27 knockouts, has long been a good power puncher and KO artist. On Saturday, he made good on the words spoken by his trainer, Calvin Ford, before the fight when he said that Davis had never been pushed and that he could do a lot more than the world had seen.
What Davis did best, however, was recognize who he was. Garcia was, and still is, a great talent, and if it wasn’t for him calling out Davis after beating Javier Fortuna last year, this bout may never have happened. Garcia would not let the politics of boxing get in his way and was adamant in his demand that Davis be his next opponent.
He, like Davis, promoted the bout expertly.
Unlike Davis, however, Garcia still has a lot of learning to do. Davis realized it quickly.
“I don’t know, I just felt like I was a step, a step above him,” Davis said at the post-fight press conference. “Everything he was doing in the ring, I was already aware of. Everything. I knew him [what Garcia was going to do] a couple of steps before he did it. I was mostly quiet. I thought I would let him make his mistakes and capitalize on his mistakes.”
That’s the flavor of a veteran, a smart, well-trained fighter who has fought many styles and been in stressful situations for years. Davis was not caught in the moment and played.
Garcia is a tremendous physical talent. He showed quick hands at times, but he didn’t land that one big, clean shot. Davis landed his left hook and Garcia couldn’t change. And Garcia in past fights would often cross over and leave his chin up in the air ready to be hit like a golfer holding his ball on a tee.
In the second round, fighting far too aggressively, Garcia threw a right hand at Davis that Davis easily avoided. Davis then responded with a perfectly placed left hand that dropped Garcia.
That, in a nutshell, was the fight, and even Garcia recognized it later.
“I just wanted to make the fight a little bit more interesting,” Garcia said after the bout. “Again, that’s my experience at the biggest level. I worried until sure. I should have just made it boring, missed it and kept it outside, but at one point I decided to start throwing. Obviously, it didn’t work out favor.”
The talent level between the fights is equal. There are things Davis is better at than Garcia, and vice versa. But being smart and sticking to a game plan even when the situation is more intense is part of being a good fighter, not just good.
Davis managed to do just that. He proved that he is one of the best in the world. He has been an experienced coach with Ford, and he showed the poise and understanding that he had not shown before. He has grown in each of his fights, but he took his biggest step 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 didn’t hurt him with a punch, but said at one point, “Garcia might have caught me” with a decent punch.
But Davis held his ground and that’s what won him the fight.
“There wasn’t a shot that I caught to the point where I felt like I was in trouble,” Davis said. “I stayed calm and I felt he was more nervous 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 a hurry and was caught. I didn’t want to do that so I knew I had to stay calm.”
He finished in the seventh – the round he expected before the fight he would do – and is now starting a bright future. The lightweight division is loaded and at the top, there are guys like the undisputed champion Devin Haney, Vasiliy Lomachenko and Shakur Stevenson to fight.
Davis wisely didn’t talk about his plans, showing the smarts that he probably only had a fight or two before.
This is a very talented man at the highest level and he fights not only with speed, power and skill but with patience, determination and IQ.
It’s a hard combination to beat.
