Without question, one of the marquee fights to make in boxing is Ryan Garcia vs. Gervonta Davis. Conversations occurred in the past between the parties, but the stars didn't align. Now, they may be.
Garcia was in the building when Davis knocked out Rolly Romero at the end of May. With undisputed lightweight champion Devin Haney locked in for a rematch against George Kambosos Jr., Teofimo Lopez moving up to 140 pounds, and the uncertainty of when Vasiliy Lomachenko will return, Davis and Garcia only have each other. The fighters know it, and the fans know it. Before any talks can resume, Garcia has to get past Javier Fortuna on Saturday from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. You can only watch the fight live and exclusively worldwide on DAZN.
There's sentiment Garcia is overlooking Fortuna and thinking about a future Davis showdown. He routinely gets asked about "Tank" at every turn. Fortuna (37-3-1, two no contests) is a two-division world champion and taken on top opposition like former world champions Robert Easter Jr. and Jo Jo Diaz. His resume and record make Fortuna easy to focus on regardless of what people inside and outside of boxing think.
"It's fairly easy," Garcia explained to DAZN. "You just train hard, and you make sure you don't miss a training session. You don't not study your fighter. I've already studied him. I've already done my homework on him. Now it's just time to do what I always do. I've been boxing since I was seven years old. If people don't know now, if I don't know what I'm doing, then they're silly. I've been fighting since I was a little boy. I think I know what I'm capable of in that ring. People only say that because look at (this).
"So if you're playing baseball and you know you're playing the A's after you play the Yankees, it's just no secret like, ‘Oh, I'm gonna play the Yankees tomorrow, but today I'm playing the Angels. But you know to focus. You're in the game. You're going to be focusing on the Angels while they're pitching. You know, ‘Ok, here comes the ball and bang. Here's this pitcher, and you just assess it in the moment’.
"It's the same thing for Fortuna. I know that I'm fighting Fortuna. It's no secret, but I also know that Gervonta is up next. I'll talk about it, but it's not like I'm losing focus on Fortuna. People can't separate their mind thing. They can't multitask. I just know that when I'm talking about Tank for a future fight. When I'm talking about Fortuna, it's about a present fight. I know how to separate the two. Now people could call it however they want."
Garcia made headlines when he attended Davis-Romero. He admits going to the fight was more of a business trip so he could get an up-close and personal view of how Davis fights instead of watching video of him. He didn't come away too impressed with Davis' performance. In turn though, he's happy Davis walked out with the KO victory as it brings potentially more eyeballs to them if he takes care of Fortuna and negotiations can be handled to make it happen.
"I was looking at the fight where Tank, for some reason, when he's up against guys that he's supposed to be, he gets tagged up a lot," Garcia said. "You could name a few (fights like) Leo Santa Cruz, Mario Barrios, (and) a couple other fights that you just don't expect him to get hit that much, but he just gets tagged up. It’s just probably that's just how he is. He walks up very easily as you see his face. He bruises very easily, just what I've seen. For me, I thought Rolly had enough power in his punch to really do damage to Tank.
"Then I also thought that Tank wouldn't be able to handle Rolly’s distance, and again he didn't. He wasn't doing too well with it in the fight. So everything I really much thought came into play, but I knew that Rolly didn't have experience. If you start boxing at 17, you don't understand that you don't need to get greedy in certain situations, certain positions, and he didn't know that. He just jumped in and got caught with a looping left, which you don't jump in on southpaws like that because they're waiting for that shot. That's a lack of experience. But if he would have played his cards right and didn't give Tank that shot, who's to say that it wouldn't have looked like a very close fight. Who's to say that because it's not like Tank was in complete control over that fight. It wasn't like he was hitting Rolly at will. He got what he could get.
"To me, there was a lot of things that I seen in that fight. It wasn't the most impressive thing to me, but you only could see that from a boxer's eye of view to somebody that's just watching (and saying), ‘Wow, Tank led him into that shot.’ He just reacted good, and props to him. I'm happy that he won actually because now it sets us for a bigger fight. All I have to do is have a knockout myself in (the) Fortuna fight, and then that fight will be huge."