Tim Bradley thinks Vasily Lomachenko has the technical tools to defeat Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis if they meet in a lightweight unification contest in November.
Tank’s Reliance on Knockout Power
Bradley notes that Tank Davis (30-0, 28 KOs), the WBA 135-lb champion, has never fought an A-class fighter during his 11-year career. He’s overly reliant on landing a big knockout to win his fights, even against non-boxers.
In a fight against IBF champion Lomachenko (18-3, 12 KOs), Tank would quickly find himself behind an eight ball going into the championship rounds and desperately need a homerun shot to get him out of trouble.
Lomachenko’s Technical Superiority
Against an experienced technical fighter like the two-time Olympic gold medalist Lomachenko, he would spot Tank’s crude, primitive attempts to land his fight-saving shot from a mile away. He would avoid the punches to box his way to a comfortable twelve-round unanimous decision.
“It’s a great match-up. I wish that match-up could have happened four or five years ago when Lomachenko was Lomachenko. However, I still think the experienced Lomachenko has what it takes. He can defeat Tank,” said boxing analyst Tim Bradley to the media, discussing the potential mega-fight between Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis and Vasily Lomachenko in November.
The fight between Tank and Lomachenko should have occurred seven years ago when Loma first started showing interest in fighting him. Still, neither the Baltimore native nor his former promoters at Mayweather Promotions desired it. They knew what time it was.
They didn’t want it, and it’s easy to see why. Tank and Mayweather Promotions had a good thing going all those years, fighting scrubs, making bank, and pilling up the wins without risking anything. It’s match-making 101.
Take a decent fighter with huge truck-like power but rudimentary boxing skills and pit them exclusively against lesser fighters to bring in the cash and create an inflated record.
Vasily’s Game Plan
“He still has to steer clear of not getting caught with that big shot,” Bradley continued about Lomachenko. “If he does that and keeps his back off the ropes, and he makes Tank pay when he’s being inconsistent and just tries to come behind that high guard,’ said Bradley.
It’s a given that Lomachenko must avoid falling into one of Tank’s traps by rushing him or fighting with his back against the ropes. The fighters that Tank has knocked out in the past often ran straight at him, throwing wild haymakers, which made it easy for him to land one of his big kill shots to get the knockout.
“He takes advantage of that by twisting on angles, staying low, and getting the hell out of the way of that uppercut or anything that Tank brings; he has a chance of winning the fight. He has the gas tank; he has the knowledge, the experience, and the championship pedigree,” said Bradley about Lomachenko.
What we’ve seen from Lomachenko in his career is the technical ability that Tank Davis has never seen. The guys that Tank has fought have been punchers like himself in fights against Leo Santa Cruz, Rolly Romero, Isaac Cruz, Ryan Garcia, Yuriorkis Gamboa, and Mario Barrios. His promoters have well-matched him.
Loma’s Experience and Championship Pedigree
“He has seen it all, even at his old age [36], and if he has one more fight left in him, one more good one left in him, it’s got to be on that night against Tank,” said Bradley. “Everybody is counting him out already. ‘He’s too old.’ Okay, you say that all you want, but Tank has still got to get in there and land that shot.”
Lomachenko has fought better fighters skills-wise in the pros and amateur ranks than Tank Davis, so this could be an almost unfair fight between the master technician and the one-trick pony from Baltimore.
Tank is a good KO artist, but his skills are just plain awful, and his work rate is anemic to the level where you have to wonder if he’s got a gas tank issue that he’s hiding.
“I haven’t seen any of these young guns and killers get in there and do that. You have [Teofimo] Lopez, who fought him [Lomachenko] when he was injured [in October 2020]. Lopez got thumpers. He can punch, and he didn’t catch him and hurt him,” said Bradley.
Teofimo Lopez, Nicholas Walters, and Orlando Salido, three of the harder punchers Lomachenko has fought during his career, were unable to hurt him with their attempts to score a knockout. Teofimo gassed out after seven rounds and was fortunate to be given a win because he lost six rounds.
“I know Tank has got that special power and he’s going to have to land it against Loma. Will he land it? We’re going to see. If he lands it, great, fantastic, he won the fight,” said Bradley. “But he’s still got to go on there and prove he’s top-level, and I believe Tank is top-level.”
Tank will land something big during his fight with Lomachenko, but it won’t be a hard enough shot for him to score a knockout or a victory.
Without that KO, Tank would be utterly hopeless unless the judges bailed him out with a controversial victory. With Lomachenko’s boxing skills, he’ll make it so one-sided that it would be impossible for the judges to give the fight to the wrong guy.
Tank’s Unproven Status
“I do believe Tank is an A-class fighter, but this would be the first time. Maybe the second because I believe [Jose] Pedraza was on his way up, and I think he was very young when he fought him. 20-something years old,” said Bradley.
I disagree completely with Bradley’s comment about Tank being “A-class.” When did Tank prove that distinction? Was it when he fought a weight-drained Ryan Garcia or C-class Rolly Romero? How about the tiny 5’4″ Isaac Cruz? Nobody on Tank’s entire 11-year resume is good enough for him to have earned an “A-class” rating.
You can say that Tank is a good B-class slugger and tiny toy cannon version of Julian Jackson, but he’s as flawed. We’ve seen Tank get outboxed way too many times by marginal fighters, and that wouldn’t happen if he were a true A-class fighter.
“You can pretend all you want this dude [Tank Davis] is a four-division world champion or a three-division world champion and all that. No, he ain’t. He’s a two-time world champion,” said Bradley.
Nah, Tank isn’t a three or four-division world champion. In the truest sense, he’s only a one-division world champion at lightweight, and even then, that’s shaky because he still hasn’t fought anyone good at 135. The guy’s Tank beaten at 135 ain’t one of the murderer’s row killers.
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