Gervonta Davis fights to controversial draw with Lamont Roach

Gervonta Davis had to accept a draw in a controversial fight with Lamont Roach tonight.

Gervonta “Tank” Davis’ perfect record is no more, but he remains controversially undefeated after a majority draw decision tonight in his fight with Lamont Roach.

One judge scored the fight for Davis on a tally of 115-113, while the other two cards came back even, 114-114.

Bad Left Hook unofficially scored the fight 115-113 and 116-112, both for Lamont Roach, who came in as a massive underdog and performed exceptionally well.

A highlight, of sorts, came in the ninth round, when Davis took a knee and referee Steve Willis refused to call the knockdown, essentially allowing Tank to call his own timeout, then go over to his corner to have his face wiped with a towel without approval or supervision. We’ve already discussed that a bit, but it’s truly one of the absurd and bizarre non-calls you’ll ever see.

Davis blamed having his hair done recently and grease getting in his eyes on the knee incident.

“He probably wasn’t (lying) when he said grease got in his eye, but if you voluntarily take a knee, that should be a knockdown,” Roach said after the fight.

Roach (25-1-2, 10 KO) was coming up from 130 lbs for the first time in his career in a serious bout, and never really seemed to have any significant trouble with the power of Davis (30-0-1, 28 KO), who may have been relying on the historic “inevitability” of said power doing the job in the end, even with slow starts and some struggles along the way.

That just didn’t come to pass in this one. Roach and his team had an excellent game plan and the fighter executed tremendously well, while Davis just never put it all together to the level a major favorite and big star is expected to do.

The scoring itself will be controversial, of course, as any draw is going to be, but when you also take into account Willis’ non-call and boxing’s history of favoring money draws, there’s just a lot to be suspicious about tonight, which is fair enough if you’ve seen enough boxing in your life.

“I think I pulled it off in the last three rounds for sure,” Davis said. “I was catching him with some clean shots and breaking him down as the rounds went on. But he kept coming, and I didn’t want to make no mistakes, so I kept it cautious.”

Davis said it wasn’t Roach who made the fight competitive, but his own effort, but he did say he feels Roach should get a rematch.

“No, to be honest, I really made it competitive. For real. To be honest,” he said. “But for sure, Lamont is a great fighter. He’s got the skills, he’s got punching power. It was a learned lesson. Shoutout to Lamont Roach and his whole team, man, hopefully we can run it back.”

“I came out here and showed it,” Roach said. “I’m a little disappointed in the decision, I thought I pulled it out. But that’s two skilled fighters showing off their craft. I definitely thought I won, but we can run it back. Gervonta’s a great fighter. … It’s a win for me in my book, but we’re not satisfied with that. We want a real W.”

“I’m him. I’m telling you that. I’m one of the best fighters in the world and it showed tonight,” he added, saying he does want the rematch.

Roach is exactly correct that this should be seen as a win for him, even if just a moral victory, and that’s how the boxing world is going to think of it, too. Davis’ stock is going to take a legitimate hit here, and it should, but at the same time a rematch between the two will now be bigger than this fight was, because far more people will go into that one thinking Roach could — or even should — win, which was just not the case this time around.

Lamont Roach proved a lot of people wrong. And Gervonta Davis may have, too, just not the way he wanted.

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