LAS VEGAS — Ryan Garcia took a beat, then dropped to one knee, the delayed effect of a stinging liver shot, a perfectly placed left hand from Gervonta “Tank” Davis that floored his foe for the second occasion in their superfight on Saturday.
This time, Garcia didn’t beat the count.
Referee Thomas Taylor reached the count of 10 at 1 minute, 44 seconds of Round 7, with Garcia still on one knee struggling to catch his breath. Davis’ victory came before 20,842 at the sold-out T-Mobile Arena, an anticlimactic but conclusive finish to boxing’s most-anticipated matchup in years.
With that single left hand, Davis (29-0, 27 KOs) cemented himself as one of boxing’s pound-for-pound best fighters, if not one of the sport’s singular biggest stars in a 136-pound catchweight bout that was preceded by months of trash talk and hype.
“I thought he was going to get up,” said Davis, ‘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 then he just shook his head, ‘No.'”
Garcia (23-1, 19 KOs) was also floored in Round 2, the result of a well-timed counter left hand that crashed flush into his face. Just as soon as his body hit the canvas, Garcia sprung up as if to show the shot didn’t hurt him. He didn’t show any ill effects from the knockdown throughout the bout.
But body shots like the one Davis landed in the seventh are a different animal, even if they don’t produce the sort of brutality fans lust for.
“I couldn’t breathe,” Garcia said. “I was going to get back up, but I just couldn’t get up. … He just caught me with a good shot. I don’t want to make no excuses in here. … I just couldn’t recover. … He caught me with a good body shot, snuck under me and caught me good.”
Davis was coming off a TKO victory over Hector Luis Garcia in January. Garcia (23-1, 20 KOs) didn’t fight for all of 2021 before returning last year with wins over Emmanuel Tagoe and Javier Fortuna.
Davis’ WBA secondary lightweight title was not on the line Saturday. Both fighters had to weigh in earlier in the day without exceeding 146 pounds due to a rehydration clause requested by Davis.
Source:ESPN
