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‘Seun Ibukun-Oni, Abuja

 

Daily Courier – Gervonta “Tank” Davis added to his fast-growing highlight reel and retained his WBA Lightweight Title with a sensational knockout victory over previously unbeaten Rolando Romero Saturday night in the main event of a Showtime PPV in front of a sold out Barclays Center in Brooklyn in a Premier Boxing Champions event.

For Davis, it was a return to the venue where he won his first world title via a star-making 2017 KO of Jose Pedraza. Saturday’s event was the highest grossing and most attended (18,970) boxing event in the venue’s history.

The fierce rivals finally settled their war of words in the ring in a highly-anticipated event, although the early rounds saw the fighters largely feeling each other out. Davis (27-0, 25 KOs), a three-division world champion, showed off his movement and boxing abilities through those rounds, while Romero (14-1, 12 KOs), who promised a first-round knockout, was unable to hurt Davis despite pushing the pace initially.

In round six, Davis gave his legions of loyal fans what they had come out to see, landing the decisive blow as he had guaranteed in the pre-fight build-up. Davis closed the show with a fierce counter left hook that sent Romero face first into the ropes and onto the mat.

While Romero was able to rise to his feet, referee David Fields had seen enough and waived off the action 2:49 into the round. The fight was fairly even statistically, with Davis only out-landing Romero 25-22, but with a significant edge in punch accuracy (30% to 19%) according to CompuBox.

After the fight, Romero stated his intention on a rematch, while Davis thanked Romero for accepting the fight.

“I want the fight again,” said Romero. “I exposed him and won every single round.”

It was never going to be a points fight. It was always going to be settled by KO. As for “running”, that’s called boxing and setting traps. He said pre-fight that he wasn’t going to get into an emotional early round shootout. I’m sure you’ve watched a lot of fights but comments like this sound very casual.

Davis was running, there was no way he was getting a 1st round KO. Davis was clearly very cautious of Romero’s power and was just waiting for a counter-punching opportunity. I feel like Romero could’ve won on points if he just stayed on the jab and not pressed so much. Doesn’t look like the judges were about to let that happen.