Gervonta Davis's match set to go on after domestic violence charge
With one-punch knockout power and an abundance of showmanship, Gervonta “Tank” Davis has become one of the most compelling and lucrative draws in boxing, frequently and violently dispatching opponents in the early rounds at a pace comparable to iconic heavyweight Mike Tyson.
Yet as much buzz as Davis creates in the ring, the Baltimore southpaw on multiple occasions has tangled with the law outside of it, muddying the burgeoning legacy of the five-time world champion entering Saturday night’s highly anticipated main event at Capital One Arena.
The 28-year-old Davis (27-0, 25 knockouts) places his World Boxing Association lightweight title on the line against Hector Luis Garcia (16-0, 10 KOs) in the headline bout of a Premier Boxing Champions card to be broadcast on Showtime pay-per-view.
“A lot of these young men get thrown on a big stage very quickly, dealing with the spotlight, with money, with attention,” Stephen Espinoza, president of Showtime Sports, said of Davis. “Now that’s not an excuse for some of the things Tank’s become involved in, and certainly we’ve been disappointed by that.
“We’ve had a lot of behind-the-scenes conversations and gone so far as to impose certain conditions upon us continuing. At a point we do expect those things will stop, or we’ll have to make a harder decision, but I think to a point there’s a level of forgiveness and a recognition that he’s a work in progress, so that gets him a little leeway but only so much.”
The fight in Chinatown is the first main event of this magnitude set to take place in D.C.’s largest arena since Tyson’s swan song in 2005.
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Much of the conversation recently, however, has been about the latest in Davis’s litany of encounters with law enforcement, including his arrest Dec. 27 in Parkland, Fla., for striking a woman on the right side of her head, according to an incident report from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.
The incident took place at a home owned under a trust Davis controls, records indicate. Davis, according to the report, was jailed on a misdemeanor domestic violence charge of battery causing bodily harm after the woman, who does not live with Davis, suffered an abrasion on the inside of her lip.
Released Dec. 28 on $1,000 bail, Davis vehemently denied the charges in a since-deleted social media post. Two days later, Vanessa Posso, the previously unnamed victim and mother of Davis’s daughter, released a statement disputing claims of domestic violence.
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“The state of our relationship has been in a fragile space and Gervonta and I were both at fault for the argument,” Posso posted to her Instagram page. “While emotions were running high I made an unnecessary call to law enforcement in a intense moment while I was frantic.
“Gervonta did not harm me or our daughter.”
Other legal issues have followed Davis over the past three years. In November 2020, he was accused of fleeing the scene of an accident in Baltimore while traveling in a 2020 Lamborghini SUV. Among the four people involved in the collision was a pregnant woman.
Last September, according to the Baltimore City State Attorney’s Office, a Baltimore Circuit judge denied a plea deal that would have avoided jail time for Davis for the hit-and-run. A trial scheduled for Dec. 12 was moved to Feb. 16.
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Additional incidents include Davis being charged with simple battery domestic violence in Coral Gables, Fla., after a video showed him putting his hand around the neck of the mother of his daughter and pulling her out of her seat at a charity basketball game in February 2020.
One year earlier, a man sought a warrant for Davis’s arrest stemming from an encounter at the Tysons Galleria shopping mall in McLean, Va. An initial report from TMZ said Davis shoved a police officer responding to the incident.
But according to WMAR-2 in Baltimore, Fairfax County Police indicated TMZ’s report was inaccurate and that Davis did not get physical with officers on the scene. TMZ subsequently reported the case was dismissed in October 2019.
“I feel that’s definitely a distraction for me because of all the feedback,” Davis said. “I mean, there’s a lot of trolls in the world. I mean, it’s a part of life though. I feel as though it comes with the territory. I’ve just got to find ways to keep myself focused.”
Controversy surrounding Davis has not diminished his popularity much, if at all, based on ticket sales. An announced crowd of 18,970, a record for a boxing match at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, witnessed Davis topple Rolando Romero in Round 6 with a single punch.
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He also has packed venues such as Staples Center in Los Angeles, State Farm Arena in Atlanta and the Alamodome in San Antonio, where Davis scored a sixth-round knockout over Leo Santa Cruz to retain the WBA featherweight and lightweight championships.
Davis’s career knockout percentage of 92.6 to date surpasses that of Tyson (88 percent), who won 24 of his first 27 bouts via knockout.
Only three of Tyson’s first 27 fights went the distance, and 15 ended in the first round. Davis has had four fights go the distance, with eight first-round knockouts, most recently against Hugo Ruiz on Feb. 9, 2019, in Carson, Calif., in defense of Davis’s 130-pound WBA title.
“You’ve got to start with his ferociousness in the ring,” Espinoza said. “And I think along with that is the dichotomy, a somewhat shy, somewhat reserved, almost baby-faced kid outside the ring who turns into a star the minute the curtain rises because if you go to his events, it’s not just the performance in the ring. It’s the spectacle and the energy.
“You immediately know when you’re at an event like that this is one of those guys that has it. Whatever it is, he has it.”
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