“The crazy thing is, I didn’t even throw that hard.”
-Gervonta “Tank” Davis
Gervonta Davis didn’t do much Saturday night in Brooklyn in his fight against the voluble Rolando “Rolly” Romero. According to my friends at CompuBox, he threw just 14 punches a round and landed a total of 25 over the course of the fight’s 17 minutes of action.
But when you’re a 134 pound man incongruously known as “Tank”, it only takes one.
A single booming left hand while Romero had his hands down and his head up ended the night on a high note for the 27-year-old slugger. Romero landed face first in the ropes and, after regaining his feet, was unable to respond to referee David Fields’ commands. Davis, the sport’s baby-faced, quiet new star, walked away with another one for the highlight reel.
Romero? After all his talk of knocking Davis out in the first round, the challenger walked from the ring with a glazed look, each careful step on his unsteady legs seemingly a bit of an adventure. The preternaturally cocky Romero, especially after all his bold talk, was a meme waiting to happen—and, sure enough, within seconds the internet had turned him into another victim of Rey Mysterio’s iconic 619.
“He just ran into it,” Davis said. “He just ran into it. Something like when Manny Pacquiao got caught. I didn’t even throw it that hard and he’s the one who ran into it, when he was talking that it was going to be me.”
Prior to the knockout, the fight had been an extraordinarily cautious affair on both sides. With so much at stake, pride not the least of it, both men fought not to make a mistake.
“He was strong for sure but there were a couple shots that I was getting warmed up with and he caught me and I was like, ‘I can’t sit with him just yet,’” Davis said. “I know when to take it to my opponents and when to chill out. There was someone in the crowd and they were telling me to press forward and I was like, not yet. I got to loosen him up a little more.”
After the fight, Romero was as loud as ever, demanding a rematch and proclaiming that he’d won the match. Except, you know, for the inconvenient knockout at the end.
“I won all six rounds. I won every moment of that fight. I exposed him and we need to run that shit back,” Romero proclaimed. “…I want Gervonta Davis again. I was winning that fucking fight and I just got hit with a clean shot. That’s all and that’s that. I had him running like a bitch the entire fight. He got a nice shot in. That’s all that happened. He got hurt multiple times and he ran around. He was terrified of me and I doubt he’ll do the rematch.”
Davis, for his part, just smiled. Winners have that option. He’s hunting bigger game after settling business with Romero, with internet-sensation Ryan Garcia (who received Jake Paul level boos in Brooklyn) the likely next target.
The bout, the 40th held at Brooklyn’s Barclay Center, was a financial bonanza. Almost 19,000 fans (18,970) packed into the building to see the grudge match, luminaries like Madonna and Michael Strahan among them.
Davis has grown his following from the ground up and is especially popular in the African-American community. The rest of the world? Well, after an entertaining buildup and satisfying knockout like that one, they won’t be far behind.