John Riordan: Gervonta Davis one of the world's most enthralling boxers and a bad man outside of the ring
BROOKLYN DODGER: Gervonta Davis celebrates after knocking out Rolando Romero with a left hook in the sixth round during their fight for Davis' WBA World lightweight title at Barclays Center. Picture: Al Bello/Getty Images
For almost 15 years now, I have regularly cast my mind back to a gem of a piece of music writing put out into the world by The Guardian writer and critic Laura Barton.
It's short and simple and it introduced me and perhaps a few others for the first time to a new musician emerging improbably out of the woods somewhere in Wisconsin. Bon Iver, real name Justin Vernon, has gone on to enjoy a successful Indie Folk career and even a Taylor Swift collaboration which would have seemed unimaginable in February, 2008.
Back then, I’d look forward to Fridays and the weekly Hail, Hail, Rock'n'Roll column landing on the back page of the G2 supplement. And this particular one stuck with me.
This was before Bon Iver became one of the faces and the sounds of the Brooklyn backlash, eliciting groans as he began to be unfairly maligned as just another flannel-wearing hipster idol whose tones would waft out of the dark and pretentious coffee spots that do a roaring trade in the more affordable and artsy parts of town.
I'll be honest here, I have a vivid memory of reading Barton's wide-eyed and infatuated column in Cork Coffee Roasters on Bridge Street before a shift at the Examiner. I probably put the pages down and I probably stared wistfully out the window, a wannabe caricature of that time.
I wanted to hear this new singer but I also wanted to shake Barton's hand. The music critic is supposed to be cool and aloof, not infatuated. "If we have spoken in the past couple of weeks, I apologise," she wrote. "If you have poured out your heart and found me blank-faced, if you have asked me whether you should wear the red or the blue, or if I want-milk-with-that and I have appeared distracted, let me say that I am sorry. My mind has been elsewhere. For the past fortnight, every moment not spent listening to the Bon Iver record, For Emma, Forever Ago, has seemed wasted."
I wanted to get that out of the way. I want there to be no confusion. When I tell you I have spent too much of this week thinking about Gervonta Davis, my regret and sense of guilt is on a whole other level. And I want to cite the source from which I’m drawing a little bit of inspiration even if that column forever ago was about a good guy producing songs and this column today is about a bad guy producing knockouts.
“Tank” Davis is one of the most fascinating fighters in world boxing today. Let’s also get this out of the way: his record outside of the ring is very bad and includes a very public roughing up of a former girlfriend in 2021 and a recent arrest for unspecified domestic violence just 11 days before Saturday’s successful WBA lightweight title defence against talented Dominican super featherweight Hector Luis Garcia.
Let’s also note here that Davis grew up in one of the most violent sections of Baltimore and, for better and worse, boxing has been his escape since the age of five. Throughout his youth and to this day, his trainer has been Calvin Ford, the former amateur who partially inspired The Wire character Dennis "Cutty" Wise. Both Ford and the fictional version of him spent time in prison and for both of them, the boxing gym helped them avoid the gang life lurking outside the walls.
Davis was attached to his hip from the age of seven, the younger in need of a strong role model as he approached a vulnerable time in his young life. The elder has done ok too, guiding the fighter to titles at super featherweight, lightweight and light welterweight.
None of this is to make any excuse for Davis’ behaviour outside the ring but maybe it helps us understand a little bit of what is happening behind the darkness of his eyes. Inside the ring, he is able to skillfully transfer trauma into trouble for his opponents.
Measuring just over 5 ft 5, his powerful punching is beyond what should be expected of a boxer so slight. He isn’t your traditionally ripped and toned fighter and he never presents as being overly interested in how he is perceived, a trait that could continue to have dire consequences outside in the world.
Davis may be fascinating but he is absolutely devoid of any overt charisma. When you observe and accept his reluctance to play the promotion game in any calculated sense, he becomes all the more hypnotising.
I first saw him in person when he was comically late for a press conference ahead of his previous fight in Brooklyn last May, his sole 2022 bout. His opponent, Rolando Romero, was fuming. Eventually, Davis strolled in quietly, surrounded by a set of mountainous security guards, each at least three times his size. He settled into his seat and measured up poor ol’ Rolly with total disdain. All he had to say with something approaching a twinkle in his eye was that his private jet was delayed and wouldn’t you know it, 20 minutes later, the entire event ended in a 30-man brawl that spilled out into the hotel lobby.
Romero and his crew were hustled out of that one and down the escalator, his first of three losses in three days. At the weigh-in 24 hours later, Davis childishly nudged him off the stage, a hilarious act of disrespect in which no one got hurt apart from Romero’s increasingly throbbing ego. A stress vein must have permanently popped out of the right side of Romero’s head because the following night, something offered an obvious target for Davis’ astonishingly quick left hook which produced a sixth round knockdown and which delighted the strongly partisan 20,000 at the Barclays Center.
Seek it out but blink and you’ll miss.
This past weekend, the Washington DC arena which is home to basketball’s Wizards and ice hockey’s Capitals enjoyed record gate receipts unheard of over the course of its 25-year history prior to this past weekend. Tank is box office and his biggest fight is yet to come.
Both he and Ryan Garcia have targeted an April 19 showdown which could end up being the biggest fight of 2023, not as much of an achievement as that used to be, admittedly. The Californian ranks higher in the pound-for-pound stakes and the pair have been trading enough barbs on social media (and apparently in real life too) to ensure the east coast/west coast nature of the feud will reach boiling point.
The win over the other Garcia was a risky gamble and preamble to the big one in April. Davis has a lot of the defensive attributes that defined his former promotional mentor, Floyd Mayweather, another terrible person whose skills distract and enthral idiots like me.
Davis can dart away at will, switch stances and find the fight-ending shot with alarming speed. The start of Saturday’s eighth round was delayed by a fight in the expensive ringside seats. Meek Mill thought better of the situation and led his 20-man entourage out of the arena. The referee restarted the round and after a flurry of hits startled Garcia as the bell approached, he staggered to the wrong corner. He then told his own corner that he didn’t know where he was and that he couldn’t see out of his right eye, prompting them to end the contest.
Davis’ GTD Promotions extricated themselves from the Mayweather team ahead of this win and must now figure out the fine print for the fight everyone wants to see. Including me, I’m sorry to say.
Boxing doesn’t have the same hold over me that it did when it seemed like every other weekend had a Vegas fight worth staying up for. But Tank has me captive even though I dislike everything else about him. From his necessarily irritating social media presence to the much more serious tendency in his personal life to step his foot down on those weaker than him.
There is less human interaction in the dead of winter and I've been taking up a little too much airtime in wanting to speak about Gervonta Davis. FaceTimes with home, texts with friends, coffees in real life. “How was your weekend?” Well, I stayed up until 2am Saturday to watch a fighter at the peak of his powers even though I have deep reservations about him as a person.
Like a prize fighter, Justin Vernon hid himself away to make his musical breakthrough. Tortured souls are everywhere and they will always be the most fascinating to us. Let’s hope Gervonta Davis finds the help he needs to keep the damage inside the ring and away from the people closest to him.
@JohnWRiordan
