Former undisputed heavyweight champion Mike Tyson agrees with the opinion that Gervonta “Tank” Davis is the new “face of boxing.”
Last month, Davis picked up his most high profile win when he knocked out Ryan Garcia in seven rounds.
The Showtime Pay-Per-View generated a smashing 1.2 million buys, with a gate of $22 million at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
After the fight, Tank proclaimed himself as the new face of boxing – and Tyson agrees.
“He is truly right, he is the face of boxing,” Tyson said to Forbes. “But that’s because Ryan Garcia is the draw. And that makes [Garcia] the face of boxing because of the amount of people that he fills in an arena. Since that fight, Ryan Garcia fans will turn into Tank’s fans, and [Davis] is going to have the biggest drawing power, I believe.”
“Ryan brought those people out, and normally when the draw gets beaten, like Ryan, when he gets beaten, the people that are his fans are now Tank’s fans.”
Davis has no shortage of potential opponents in the lightweight division.
The two biggest threats to Davis, according to Tyson, are Devin Haney and Shakur Stevenson.
Haney, the undisputed world champion at 135-pounds, will return on May 20 in a very important title defense against three division world champion Vasiliy Lomachenko.
“It’s a great possibility [that Tank Davis could go undefeated his whole career], but then you’ve got Devin Haney and Shakur,” said Tyson.
“Those guys are very good. Those are the only two guys who are possibly a threat to him. I know they’ve boxed before, and some people got the advantage over others in sparring, but sparring’s not like fighting. For some reason, people don’t fight as hard as they spar, or some people don’t train as hard as they fight, it’s just a strange dynamic in that.”