Undefeated 24-year-old Gervonta ?Tank? Davis is moving on from his 130 lb. weight class, ditching his WBA super featherweight title, and moving up to the deepening waters of the lightweight division where three-belt champ Vasiliy Lomachenko rules supreme.
Davis will be jumping into a division that, just a few months ago, appeared to be a barren wasteland with one untouchable king at the very top and nary a true challenger in sight. Now, however, the emergence of young talents such as Teofimo Lopez, Devin Haney, and Ryan Garcia, along with the growing presence of IBF titlist Richard Commey and the return of an apparently refurbished Yuriorkis Gamboa, make for an interesting mishmash of styles, abilities, and temperaments at 135. Throw in the names of former champs due for a second run at the top such as Robert Easter, Jose Pedraza, Rances Barthelemy, and Javier Fortuna and lightweight looks deeper and stronger than it has looked in a long time.
Adding Davis to that mix makes the division among the most intriguing in the sport.
?Tank? takes some heat for a relatively low level of opposition for someone being pushed as a burgeoning pay-per-view superstar by mentor/promoter/sometime-antagonist Floyd Mayweather. But the reality is, if we?re judging the young man by 24-year-old fighter standards, he?s okay in the r?sum? area with dominant wins over Cristobal Cruz, Jose Pedraza, and Jesus Cuellar being the high-water mark victories of his six-year pro career.
The reality is that Davis has been so dominant, with a current 13-fight KO/TKO streak and 21 of 22 career wins coming inside the distance, that his overall opposition looks weak in retrospect.
The folks over at ?The Punch Line with Kelly Pavlik and James Dominguez? (a pretty damn entertaining boxing show, btw) brought up this interesting point via their Facebook page:
?Tank has the Mike Tyson effect, meaning we haven?t seen the best version of Tank due to he knocks everyone out early and hasn?t been pushed yet??
And this certainly seems to be an accurate assessment of where Davis is right now.
Of course, things can go two ways, though. We could see Davis rise to the occasion against Lomachenko or hungry young contenders like Lopez and Haney, proving himself to be a truly complete, elite-level fighter and generational talent. We could also see him fall to pieces, ala Tyson, with a lifetime of being the baddest bully on the block dulling his other attributes or completely masking the fact that he is lacking in other attributes.
So, the jury is still out when it comes to Davis. We just don?t know how good he really is because he?s yet to be in a spirited battle against someone with a realistic chance of beating him. That?s pretty standard for this day and age, actually, and he shares that question mark with a lot of today?s best of the best like Terence Crawford and Errol Spence, who, despite their obvious ability and passing of all ?eye tests,? have not truly been challenged in a ?real,? competitive fight.
But, with his new status as WBA mandatory challenger to Lomachenko and entry into a division full of quality, young talent (along with some established veterans), ?Tank? will have the perfect canvas on which to illustrate his star power and establish his professional legacy.
But this is boxing and that means things are rarely as simple as one man fighting the very best to establish himself as the best. Davis and Mayweather Promotions are, by all accounts, difficult to deal with at the negotiating table and most everyone truly worth fighting at lightweight?Lomachenko, Lopez, Haney, Commey?is a world away from Davis, separated by conflicting business ties.
Still, the possibility exists?however slim it may be?that, this time, boxing business will not stand in the way of boxing and a quality talent like Davis will be allowed to climb as high as his ability lets him or crash spectacularly under enemy fire while trying to reach the stars.
