There was one aspect of Gervonta Davis’ impressive performance against Ryan Garcia that Davis’ trainer thinks has been underappreciated.
Calvin Ford feels Davis’ defense was instrumental in neutralizing Garcia on Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Davis dropped Garcia twice, but he also limited the effectiveness of Garcia’s trademark left hook and restricted Garcia to landing 24 percent of his punches overall, according to CompuBox’s unofficial statistics.
“They never talk about Tank’s defense,” Ford told BoxingScene.com. “If you go look at CompuBox and look at how many punches Ryan was throwing and how many he really landed clean, Tank’s defense was unreal, even when [Davis] wasn’t throwing punches.”
Garcia (23-1, 19 KOs) did connect on 42 percent of his power punches (24-of-57), but Ford could only recall Garcia landing one flush left hook to Davis’ head during six-plus rounds of action.
“He took it like a champ,” Ford said of Garcia’s connection in the second round. “That was the only one.”
CompuBox counted 30-of-63 power punches overall (48 percent) for Baltimore’s Davis.
The sharp, strong southpaw first dropped Garcia to the seat of his trunks with a counter left hand on the inside. Garcia went down with 1:01 to go in the second round, but he got up almost as soon as referee Thomas Taylor started to count.
Davis slipped one of Garcia’s left hooks just before he landed that short shot on the inside to floor Garcia the first time.
Davis (29-0, 27 KOs) sent Garcia to the canvas again with a well-placed left to the body exactly at the midway mark of the seventh round. With the air temporarily taken out of him, Garcia couldn’t beat Taylor’s count a second time and lost their Showtime Pay-Per-View main event by knockout at 1:44 of the seventh round.
“We started seeing things that he couldn’t do, so we started exploiting them things,” Ford said regarding Garcia. “And certain shots we worked on in camp, Tank demonstrated it. Boom! Caught him [in the second round]. And then, after that [Garcia] went into a shell for a little bit, you know, and stopped opening up in the third, fourth rounds. Then he started opening back up again in five and six.
“And when it came to the sixth, I told Tank, ‘Stop playing. Let’s go!’ Tank started turning it up. That’s the main thing – when you have a great fighter that he is, he still listens to his team and goes out there to push them buttons that we need to be pushed. That’s a salute for me. It’s like, ‘OK, he’s still listening.’ ”
Ford has trained Davis throughout his career, along with Kenny Ellis.
Showtime will air a replay of Davis-Garcia on Saturday night at 9 p.m. EDT/PDT. The third episode of the premium cable network’s “ALL ACCESS: DAVIS VS. GARCIA EPILOGUE” will debut immediately after Showtime’s replay of the fight.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.