Cell phone recording in his right hand, Gary Russell Jr. draped his left arm over the shoulder of Leo Santa Cruz’s father and trainer, Jose, backstage at Rabobank Theater in Bakersfield, Calif., this past September.
What came next was a scene straight out of a heat-building WWE spot. Except this one hit different.
In an attempt to bait Leo into a featherweight title unification bout, Russell jingled the gold chains dangling around the elder Santa Cruz’s neck.
“Stop ducking me,” Russell, the WBC featherweight champion, says in the Instagram video as he stares into the camera. “Come see me. I want you. I’m in arms reach — I can touch him. I can put my hands on him, Leo.”
While some boxers might have responded to the threat aggressively — at the very least scurrying to IG to post a video response — Santa Cruz didn’t. He merely called the recording “disrespectful” and refused to feed into Russell’s antics any further, relegating him to a social media jury of his peers — many of whom criticized Russell.
With Santa Cruz’s dad battling bone marrow cancer, many of Russell’s own followers called him everything from “disrespectful” to “clown,” adding that the video showed "no class."
But somehow, “El Terremoto,” Spanish for “The Earthquake,” managed to keep his tremors in check.
Perhaps, it’s just Leo Santa Cruz being Leo Santa Cruz, the calm, mild-mannered gentleman outside the ring that transforms into an action-packed, relentless fighter inside the ring. Or maybe Santa Cruz didn’t give Russell the attention he so craves with that drastic measure because he has a bigger plan in mind.
Santa Cruz will look to become a four-division world champion when he faces Miguel Flores for the vacant WBA (Super) featherweight championship Saturday night. The bout will serve as the co-main event to Deontay Wilder vs. Luis Ortiz 2 for the WBC heavyweight strap at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
If successful, as he largely expects, Santa Cruz wants to line up a showdown with none other than Gervonta Davis in early 2020. Davis is moving up in weight himself, facing Yuriorkis Gamboa for the vacant WBA lightweight title Dec. 28.
Santa Cruz views Davis — not Russell — as the opponent that will put his fighting legacy into another orbit, and his reasoning is simple. The Mexican fighter sees a ferocity in “Tank” so treacherous that he could either opt to stay clear of the young lion’s warpath or enter the lion’s den and ring the bell to see who's left standing.
He’s choosing the latter.
“What better opponent than Gervonta Davis?” Santa Cruz told DAZN following his media workout Wednesday. “I think he’s the most dangerous of all the people that they want me to fight and once I do that, I think people are going to know that I’m not scared of nobody and that I could fight whoever.
“I know I’m going against the hardest and most dangerous fighter right now, but that’s what I want,” he continued, sharing the upside of facing a fighter the caliber of Davis. “I want to challenge myself, and I want to prove with people that I’m here to fight whoever and I’m not scared of nobody. If I go out there and I get the win against Gervonta, that’s going to put me to the top.”
It’d be hard to argue that, considering the undefeated Davis has ended 21 of his 22 pro fights by knockout and seems to be on the path of becoming one of boxing’s next major stars.
The way Santa Cruz sees it, if he lands the blockbuster fight with Davis, then he could circle back and tend to “Mr.” Gary Russell Jr. to make him repent for the way he involved his father.
“Even though he did it playing around and stuff like that, it was disrespectful to my dad,” Santa Cruz said, his voice turning stern. “Of course, I’d like to get in the ring with him and punish him. I know with my pressure and body [punches], I could punish him. Hopefully the fight happens soon.
“I did say I wanted to fight him: ‘Get me the fight against Gary Russell.’ But the fight didn’t get made,” he added about the fellow PBC fighter. “I don’t know why. I don’t like fighting with words. I like going up in the ring and taking it up in the ring.”
For either of those fights to possibly materialize in 2020, Santa Cruz (36-1-1, 19 KOs) must dispose of a game Flores (24-2, 12 KOs) on Saturday night first.
“He thinks he’s gonna put me down with a body shot,” Santa Cruz said of Flores, 27. “It makes me bring the best out.”
There was a period in the 31-year-old’s life when he thought bringing his best out meant a hard cap at becoming a world champion. But through time, the forward-fighting Santa Cruz has exceeded his own expectations.
“At the beginning, I just wanted to become a world champion,” Santa Cruz remembered. “I always wanted to become a world champion, but I never thought I would be able to accomplish it because I knew it was very hard. But then I became a world champion and then a two-division world champion.
“I said, ‘I want to be a three-division, even a four-division world champion,’” he continued. “I could do it now.
“And I think, I could still do some more.”
Defeating "Tank" Davis and Russell in 2020 would spell doing the most.