Top Rank boss and Hall of Fame promoter Bob Arum is ready to pit his top pugilists against Gervonta Davis.
The Baltimore-bred knockout artist Davis (29-0, 27 KOs) has been dominating his dance partners, but the cupboard of high-profile, in-house opponents PBC could present moving forward is running dry.
Tank has bulldozed the likes of Leo Santa Cruz, Mario Barrios, Isaac Cruz, Rolando Romero, Hector Luis Garcia, and Ryan Garcia since 2020.
Many of the mega payday fights that the WBA lightweight champion would want to entertain would involve Davis and his team working with Arum, who promotes lightweights Shakur Stevenson and Vasiliy Lomachenko as well as super lightweight Teofimo Lopez Jr.
“Tank Davis is an excellent fighter and a big attraction. So sure we’d like to match [Stevenson, Lomachenko, and Lopez] against Tank Davis and see how well they would do. I like our guys to win the fight … All three would beat Davis. I really believe that … but that’s why they do the fights, right? Again, we’re open to any of that,” Arum told BoxingScene.com in an interview.
“I think [Davis] is the real deal. That’s why we’re talking about him. He’s a helluva performer. A terrific athlete, and a terrific boxer, but so are the other three [Stevenson, Lomachenko, and Lopez.]”
Arum alluded that a cross-promotional fight involving Davis would likely need to be financed by the General Entertainment Authority of Saudi Arabia and its chairman, Turki Alalshikh.
Top Rank’s shows are produced for ESPN platforms; PBC struck a deal with Amazon Prime last month.
“The way it will probably happen, where everything is happening, is the Saudis … [they] might decide to do the fight, after Ramadan this summer and cut the checks to the fighters. And that ends any kind of discussion of who gets what percentages,” said Arum.
“The stuff about A-side and dictating terms, that’s total and complete nonsense. Once you settle on the money and work out the percentages, then everything else is easy. Everything else is nonsense. But again, if we start talking about A-side and B-side, then nothing happens, they just trade insults with each other, and that’s childish. That’s why a lot of fights haven’t happened because people involved in the sport, sometimes even us, have been very childish arguing about stuff that doesn’t even matter.”
Lopez will next fight Jamaine Ortiz on Feb. 8.
Lomachenko is slated to fight George Kambosos Jr. in the coming months for the vacant IBF lightweight title.
Davis and Stevenson do not have any known fights lined up at the moment.
Manouk Akopyan is a sports journalist, writer, and broadcast reporter. He’s also a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and the MMA Journalists Association. He can be reached on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube at @ManoukAkopyan, through email at manouk[dot]akopyan[at]gmail.com, or via www.ManoukAkopyan.com.