“I feel like under different circumstances, I could beat him.” That’s what Ryan Garcia said to Fight Hub TV, ahead of his December 2024 fight against Oscar Duarte, when asked about the devastating loss to Tank. Garcia fought Gervonta Davis in April 2023, and the crowd at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas that night witnessed KingRy lose. It took Tank Davis throwing a brutal left hook to the body to knock Garcia out in the 7th round. From Garcia’s perspective, the results could’ve been different if it wasn’t for the rehydration clause that was foisted on him at the last minute.
The Garcia-Davis bout happened at a catchweight of 136 lbs, with a 10 lbs rehydration clause added to it. This also included a late-afternoon weigh-in to ensure Ryan Garcia wasn’t rehydrating beyond the prescribed weight. “Can you do an interview dehydrated? Imagine boxing,” he had told the reporter in the same interview. According to him, all of these sly tactics played a role in his losing the fight, which he has reiterated many times since then. Now, he’s just days away from his upcoming fight against Rolando Romero on May 2 at Times Square in New York. Despite it being over two years since the bout, the 26-year-old is still hung up on that loss and is not entirely ready to give up on a chance at a rematch.
Still carrying the Gervonta Davis rematch dream
In a recent interview with Ring Magazine, Emily Austin asked Ryan Garcia a series of questions in rapid fire. After a few other questions, she asked him who he thought was the greatest boxer of all time. To that, the California native replied, “Sugar Ray Robinson.” She continued asking questions quickly, and the next one was, “What’s your dream fight?” It hardly took Ryan Garcia any time before he responded, “I would want a rematch with Tank Davis.” Out of all the bunch of possible opponents he could mention, he chose to suggest a rematch with Gervonta Davis instead.
Surely, to Garcia, having a rematch makes sense. According to him, it was about the rehydration clause that restrained his abilities to overpower Davis. After losing, he had also revealed some discrepancies in the weight agreement to DAZN. “They agreed to 138, and then two weeks later they said they were not doing it unless you were 136. There are a lot of things they hit me with last minute,” Garcia had said to the reporter at the time.
So, it sounds like Garcia wanted to fight with a higher weight limit. Whereas, Davis’ team didn’t agree to that. In the desire for the fight, the 26-year-old had agreed to those weight and rehydration clause terms. But it didn’t really work out in his favor. Now, when Davis is two weight classes below him, Garcia has taken a strong stance about the weight limit, while also pushing for a rematch. After the fight against Devin Haney last year, Garcia revealed that he would want a rematch with Gervonta Davis at somewhere above 140 lbs, possibly 143 lbs. But why in heaven would Tank agree to something of that sort?
Well, Ryan Garcia is aware of the catch. “Tank knows we made good money. He knows that’s where the big money is at,” Garcia had told ESPN. So, if money were the factor, Gervonta Davis knows that there’s no shortage of it if he were to agree to a second match with Garcia. Because the financial profit was there the first time, too.
Ryan Garcia’s $30 million payday after Tank loss
The Garcia-Davis match was clearly a fan favorite. Even two years later, there hasn’t quite been a bout that came close to generating that sort of revenue. Especially if we were to talk numbers, the match had earned Garcia a whopping $30 million for their main event fight, as he revealed in a tweet a few months later. Not to mention, it had sold over 1.2 million PPV buys on Showtime.
One could note that after the Canelo Alvarez-Gennadiy Golovkin I bout from 2017, there hadn’t been such a big hit for quite some time. Not just that, the gate at T-Mobile Arena had generated an estimated $22.8 million in ticket sales! And who would want to turn down that kind of money? Tank himself got the larger purse share, at $40-50 million, according to Boxing News 24.
Therefore, if Gervonta Davis agrees to a rematch, he wouldn’t need to worry about earning some big bucks. Though considering that the weight gap between these two fighters has increased even more presently, it’s hard to predict negotiations or if the match would happen. With Garcia solid about wanting a higher weight limit, with no rehydration clauses whatsoever, it becomes all the more difficult to bring the boxers into the ring together.
That said, Ryan Garcia has been nudging Tank repeatedly for a rematch. And if it goes like the last time, chances are that the latter would end up giving in to Ryan Garcia’s demands. What do you think about that? Will there be a Ryan Garcia-Gervonta Davis II? If yes, will the Baltimore native’s team agree to meet Garcia at 147 lbs?
The post Willing to Capitalize on $30M Payday, Ryan Garcia Puts Gervonta Davis at Crossroads by Setting the Record Straight appeared first on EssentiallySports.
