Lamont Roach = The Best Gervonta Davis Could Get

WBA lightweight champion Gervonta Davis will defend against Lamont Roach Jr. on December 14th. Fans have been letting Tank (30-0, 28 KOs) and PBC know they’re not happy with this choice, but Roach (25-1-1, 10 KOs) is the best they could get.

Davis needed an opponent, and Roach was perfect for the job. The event will be shown on PBC on Amazon Prime Video PPV staged at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas. Roach, 29, is a world champion at featherweight and one of the best in the division.

While fans may be furious, there’s no one more worthwhile for Gervonta to fight than Roach. If PBC chose Andy Cruz or Floyd Schofield as his opponent for December 14th, the criticism would be just as severe as it is for their choice of Roach.

The top Lightweights Were Not Available:

• Shakur Stevenson: The #1 choice, WBC champion Shakur, is out with a hand injury, and his new promoters at Matchroom plan to bring him back against William Zepeda next February. This would be the easiest fight to make for Tank if not for Shakur suffering a hand injury while training for a fight against Joe Cordina.
• William Zepeda: The Golden Boy fighter Zepeda will fight “Latino Night” next month against Tevin Farmer on November 16th in Riyadh.
• Denys Berincyk: The WBO champion had planned to defend against Mark Chamberlain, but he was upset last month on September 21.
• Vasily Lomachenko: The IBF lightweight champion chose to take the remainder of 2024 off, and it’s unknown if he’ll ever fight again. If he does, it’s still questionable whether he’ll agree to fight Tank.

The choices for Tank came down to him either sitting on the shelf for the remainder of 2024 or staying busy by choosing Roach. Would fans have been happy if Tank hadn’t fought at all? He wasn’t about to let an entire year go by without fighting because he’d been out of action for over a year after his fight against Ryan Garcia in 2023. Tank didn’t fight for 14 months until coming back against Frank Martin last June.

Roach is a good fighter and will give Tank Davis a tough fight on December 14th. He’s more talented than Frank Martin and Ryan Garcia. Those guys have Tank a run for his money in their fights against him before getting knocked out. This isn’t a soft throwaway fight like some boxing fans mistakenly believe.

Roach has won his last six fights since suffering his sole career defeat against Jamel Herring in 2019 in a 12-round unanimous decision.