GERVONTA DAVIS is not a three-weight world champion. This narrative has to stop being voiced by those in power. We cannot make a song and dance about Josh Taylor being undisputed champion one month and, in the next, act like it never happened by declaring Davis a world champion in the exact same division. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Davis is an exciting young talent who has won a collection of sanctioning body titles of varying legitimacy without ever proving himself to be anything like the best in the world. He’s not once beaten anyone universally regarded to be the leader in any of the divisions he has competed in. In fact, a closer inspection of his record shows he’s barely beaten anyone who was in the top five at the time of fighting them. Last weekend, he defeated an unbeaten but largely unproven super-lightweight contender, albeit impressively. For us, Davis deserves his place in the 140lbs rankings, somewhere between six and 10, but nothing more.
- IT was hard not to get a little excited while watching an injury-free Vasiliy Lomachenko cruise through the gears against the brave but outclassed Masayoshi Nakatani in Las Vegas. It makes the rematch with Teofimo Lopez, the man who deservedly outpointed Loma last year, one of the most intriguing fights in the sport. The Lopez camp, though not exactly clamouring for it, are not against the sequel.
“We took the first fight without a rematch clause and got treated like s**t throughout,” Lopez’s manager David McWater told The Athletic. “So Lomachenko can fight us on pay-per-view, take the same money we did [$1.35m], or go f**k himself.”
Let’s hope that Lomachenko accepts their kind offer.