Gervonta Davis’ assistant coach, Kenny Ellis, has expressed interest in WBC lightweight champion Shakur Stevenson being Tank’s next opponent in November after the originally scheduled opponent, Vasily Lomachenko, opted to take the remainder of the year off.
A Race Against Time for Shakur’s Popularity
The likely idea behind WBA lightweight champion Tank Davis (30-0, 28 KOs) fighting Shakur (22-0, 10 KOs) now is to make the match before the New Jersey native’s popularity drops any lower than it always has. It’s a race against time.
If Tank’s team is unsure whether Shakur can turn things around after consecutive poor performances against Artem Harutyunyan and Edwin De Los Santos, it’s important that they fight him now before his value plummets further.
Shakur was booed out of the T-Mobile last November in his fight against De Los Santos and in his hometown earlier this month in his match against Harutyunhyan. That was supposed to be a showcase fight for Shakur, but it was a real struggle, and he bored his hometown fans.
If Tank doesn’t fight Shakur now, he will be worthless to him after one or two or three more fights because the boxing public will view him as unwatchable and not worth spending their money on for PPV.
Shakur will be useless to Tank in two or three more fights because he’ll have been booed out of every venue, and his new promoter will regret his decision to sign him and be stuck with the albatross.
It’s pretty obvious from watching Shakur’s last six fights that he doesn’t possess the talent to be a star, and he’ll come unglued if he faces another puncher like De Los Santos.
Still salty about Lomachenko not agreeing to fight Tank, Ellis said to MillCity Boxing, “He is straight ducking. Hopefully, Shakur won’t duck. People say Tank’s ducking Shakur, let’s see.”
Even if Tank Davis does fight Shakur now, he’s not a big enough name with casual boxing fans for the fight to be on the level of Ryan Garcia. Shakur doesn’t have the same reach Ryan does with his 12M Instagram followers.
In contrast, Shakur has only 291K followers. There’s a massive difference in popularity between Shakur and Ryan Garcia. Shakur’s formula involved bragging about himself and being a villain type. Fans tune in to see if Shakur will lose, but it doesn’t happen because his opposition has been mediocre since moving up to lightweight.
Davis vs. Shakur will likely do slightly more PPV numbers than Tank’s last fight against Frank Martin, but only because of the hardcore boxing fans.
Casuals won’t be excited about this fight. His social media activity is usually based on him complaining about being dismissed as boring by fans and fighters, and it’s not entertaining.
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