Gervonta Davis Makes the Turnstiles Hum while Evoking Images of Allen Iverson

As if there were any doubt, Gervonta “Tank” Davis proved once again last night that he is among the best fighters on the planet. Davis was ahead on the scorecards when he dismissed Ryan Garcia with a counter left hook to the liver in the seventh frame of their megafight in Las Vegas.

A sidebar to the fight was the turnout. The announced attendance was 20,842 in an arena whose listed capacity for boxing is 20,000. And keep in mind that the fight was contested at catch-weight (136 pounds) with no title on the line.

And even this doesn’t tell the full story. It was a star-studded gathering, replete with celebrities from the worlds of Hollywood and professional sports, reminiscent of some of the big outdoor fights in an earlier era of Las Vegas boxing and, as TSS correspondent David A. Avila noted in his ringside report, it was a pro-Davis crowd.

Has this ever happened before? Has a popular Mexican or Mexican-American fighter ever been the less-enamored of the two entities in a big Las Vegas fight? Somewhat more than 19 million people identify as Hispanic in the tri-state region of California, Nevada, and Arizona.

Several years ago, Leonard Ellerbe, the CEO of Floyd Mayweather Jr’s conglomerate, predicted that Tank Davis would be the next fighter to generate Mayweather-like money before his career was over. Ellerbe has proven to be a prophet. In his four fights preceding last night’s match with Ryan Garcia, Davis attracted capacity or near-capacity crowds to NBA arenas in Atlanta (16,570 for Mario Barrios), Los Angeles (15,580 for Isaac Cruz), Brooklyn (18,970 for Rolando Romero), and Washington, DC (19,310 for Hector Luis Garcia).

This mystifies people of this reporter’s generation. I have been at media-exclusive meet-and-greets for Gervonta Davis, intimate gatherings, and at these sessions was reminded of something an old sportswriter (his name eludes me) once said after an arid one-on-one interview with an important baseball player: “This guy should have been interviewing me.”

If I were putting together a dinner party for the purpose of having stimulating conversations, Tank Davis would not be on the invitation list. But this says more about me than about him as the numbers don’t lie: many people are in thrall of young Mr. Davis. To them, he is charismatic. He flaunts white middle-class norms, but that makes him more authentic; a man true to his roots. Tank Davis, in a nutshell, is the Allen Iverson of boxing.

Raised by a single mother who gave birth to him when she was 15 years old, Allen Iverson entered the NBA in 1996. During his 14 seasons, despite his small stature, he led the league in scoring four times and was an 11-time all-star. His on-the-court achievements, however, hardly encapsulated his influence. He was a polarizing figure, an anathema to the old guard, but a fellow who made the league sexier which proved beneficial from a business standpoint.

Iverson

Iverson, wrote Zachary Kondratenko in a 2011 story for Bleacher Report, “is largely credited with bringing the Hip-Hop culture to the NBA, a style so much associated with the game today it’s weird to think about the NBA before Iverson. Iverson had cornrows. He walked around in ‘gangster’ clothes. He was friends with rappers.”

Iverson (who was in attendance on Saturday night) had problems off the court that seemingly only enhanced his allure. They began in his teen years when he spent four months in jail for his alleged involvement in an inter-racial brawl at a bowling alley. Davis, who like Iverson had a rough upbringing – both of Gervonta’s parents were reportedly heavy cocaine users who spent time in prison – has likewise run into trouble with the law. He has two court dates upcoming, one in his native Baltimore for a late-night hit-and-run accident that injured four people including a pregnant woman, and the other in Broward County, Florida, for a domestic assault involving the mother of his child (charges that will almost certainly be dropped as she has recanted her testimony).

Davis, akin to Allen Iverson, has also attracted notice for his loud spending. The 28-year-old boxer reportedly owns seven high-performance cars for which he ponied up a combined $2.087 million from the dealerships.

If boxing history is any guide, Gervonta Davis will eventually go bankrupt and his detractors can gloat “I told you so,” but for the moment let’s put all this aside and give him his props. He has matured into an elite prizefighter, a ring artisan likely on his way to being exalted as one of the all-time greats.

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