The April showdown between Gervonta Davis and Ryan Garcia is one of the biggest fights that can be made today. It’s also a depressing reminder of boxing’s tolerance of criminality
Gervonta Davis, the World Boxing Association’s lightweight champion and one of America’s most prodigiously gifted young athletes, is the type of homegrown talent with a rags-to-riches backstory, crowd-pleasing style and unvarnished authenticity that makes US television executives water at the mouth.
The west Baltimore native came up the hard way from abject poverty, spent years bouncing around foster care and group homes, learned to box under the trainer who inspired the character of Dennis ‘Cutty’ Wise in The Wire and became the sport’s second-youngest world champion at just 22 years old. Since then, he’s moved the needle like few other US prize-fighters in recent memory, capturing versions of world titles across three different weight classes and selling out arenas from coast to coast. A southpaw endowed with concussive power in both hands and a granite chin, Davis is unbeaten in 29 professional outings with 27 knockouts, his status as a crossover attraction only climbing with each successive fight. When his sixth-round TKO of Rolando Romero broke the live gate record at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center last year, Madonna watched from ringside.
