Eddie Hearn believes that Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis is a ‘bad mother— ’ has the edge over Ryan Garcia but thinks the younger man definitely has a chance.
Tank fought at the weekend as he defeated Hector Luis Garcia, delivering such a barrage of blows that his opponent lost his sight temporarily.
Ryan Garcia has elected to keep his powder dry instead of chasing a tune-up fight, with both fighters seemingly clear that April 15 is when they meet after years of circling one another.
Speaking exclusively to The DAZN Boxing Show, Hearn believed that Davis’ ability to ignore controversy, and his ferocity in the ring, makes him a fearsome boxer.
“Gervonta’s a very exciting fighter, he’s also an outstanding fighter,” he began.
“I wanted to know if he got through and progressed the Ryan Garcia fight and see how his head might be after everything had happened.
“The dangerous thing about Gervonta Davis, he’s not a deep thinker. He’s not an articulate young man. He’s a bad kid. I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way. He’s a bad mother— . Just like Mike Tyson, some of these other greats were. And that makes them dangerous because they’re fearless, you can’t get into his head.
“Gervonta loses rounds, but he wears you down, punches very hard. You can’t switch off against him. It’s not like he’s technically this incredible fighter, that you’re not going to win rounds off him.
“Ryan Garcia vs. Gervonta Davis is the biggest fight in boxing right now, in terms of there to be made. In terms of fights that are on our doorstep, that’s the biggest fight out there. It’s bigger than Crawford-Spence. It’s two fanbases. It’s two completely separate fan bases and two very different young men, and it’s a brilliant fight.
"This is an afterthought to the conversation we had about mentality. I don’t know enough about RG, he came through his mental health battle. In a close fight I give a fight to the edge to the person I know psychologically is in a better position, and that is Gervonta Davis.
“I know fighters with mindsets like Gervonta Davis. He has struggles, but he just deals with them in different ways. I’m not saying Ryan Garcia hasn’t had it hard, but this is different. When I see Gervonta Davis, I see a wounded young man, with a chip on his shoulder, who doesn’t give a —.”
However, Hearn did not rule out Garcia landing the win.
He continued: “There’s a lot of questions about Ryan Garcia, but he keeps answering them to a certain level, but he’s yet to fight people at a certain level as consistently as Gervonta Davis.
“But he’s going to get hit against Ryan Garcia. Ryan Garcia is very long, he has very fast hands, where he struggled a little bit against Hector Garcia was the range. Ryan Garcia has even longer range and more power than Hector Garcia. I give Ryan Garcia a shot in this fight.”
Hearn also discusses Anthony Joshua, Demetrius Andrade, Katie Taylor, Amanda Serrano and Alycia Baumgardner in the rest of his exclusive interview, which will be shown on DAZN.