Last weekend, two prominent figures in the boxing world, Gervonta “Tank” Davis from Baltimore, Maryland, and “King” Ryan Garcia from Los Alamitos, California, squared off in front of a sold-out crowd of over twenty-thousand spectators in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight had many years of anticipation and excitement among boxing fans and finally happened on April 22, 2023. Both boxers came into the fight undefeated with Davis having racked up twenty-nine wins, twenty-seven of which were by knockout, and Garcia having racked up twenty-three wins, nineteen of which were by knockout. 

The first of twelve, three minute-long rounds began, and both fighters started off strong. Davis took a more conservative approach to the round, and Garcia took full advantage, winning round one. 

Round two was when the fight truly began to ramp up. Both fighters threw a multitude of punches with Garcia attempting four times to land his signature left-hook punch, but Davis dodged all of them before sending a hard shot to the face of Garcia, sending him to the ground. He got up almost immediately, and the fight carried on. 

Round three was quite uneventful with a lot of missed-shots from both fighters. However, the tables had turned, in other words, Garcia was fighting more conservatively while Davis was the main aggressor. 

Nothing significant happened until round seven which ended up being the final round. Davis took a hard shot to the liver-area of Garcia. There was a delayed reaction before Garcia took a knee, ultimately ending the fight. When talking about this in his post-fight press conference, Garcia said: “He just caught me with a good shot. I don’t want to make any excuses here. He caught me with a good shot and I just couldn’t recover and that’s it. He caught me with a good body shot, snuck under me and caught me good. I couldn’t breathe. I was going to get back up, but I just couldn’t get up.”

Also on this matter, Davis said: ​​“I didn’t think that body shot would end it, but I saw his facial expression and that’s what made me take it to him. It was a good shot, for sure. I thought he was going to get up but I like to play mind games, so when he was looking at me, I was looking at him trying to tell him, ‘get up!’ And he just shook his head, no.”

In the end, both fighters have lots of respect for each other. On this topic, Garcia was quoted, saying: “‘Tank’ is a great fighter. I take my hat off to him. I know we talked a lot of trash leading into the fight, but he knows what it is. It’s all love at the end of the day. I was honored to be in the ring with a great fighter and I respect him a lot. You know how the business goes. But I want to say to ‘Tank’, you’re a good man.”

While Garcia took the loss in a professional manner, celebrations heated up for Davis, and he also had great things to say about his opponent, “Everything about this was exciting, I was excited to be a part of this event.”

 With that, Gervonta “Tank” Davis took out the undefeated “King” Ryan Garcia, remaining undefeated himself.

By Kristina Klauzinski ‘24, Rising Sports Editor

kklauzinski@montroseschool.org