Thunder vs. Lightning
When the Tank rolled over the Golden Boy and made him flattened mettle
by Michael Quess Moore
Maybe the story starts on their backs, on their arms… on their flesh itself.
In this corner: boxing’s new golden boy, Ryan Garcia. A prodigy of the original golden boy of boxing (his promoter Oscar De LaHoya), Ryan is himself, a young Mexican American with his faith inked into his skin. Dual conquering lions are branded onto both of his pecs encasing a Rosicrucian crucifix in the middle. On his back, a sword is submerged into the holes of three crowns. He calls himself “King Ry.” And as much as his reign as boxing royalty is yet to be determined, the tattoos and their religious themes may allude to a whole other orientation towards kingdom, or at least a double entendre of sorts. Which is to say, as a self-professed servant in God’s army, perhaps Ryan’s tattoos and self-crowned status are just as much a reference to his Christianity as they are to his aspirations towards boxing royalty.
Either way, he carries himself like the guy he purports to be. All 5 foot 10 inches of tall regality and confidence, he shows up on Mike Tyson’s very popular podcast wearing a white shirt and bowtie and Mike calls him the new Desi Arnez. And Ryan talks a damn good one when it comes to weaving his faith in god into his faith in self. It was on Mike’s podcast where he first called out his fateful opponent to be, Gervonta “Tank” Davis and promised to knock him out in 2 rounds. And Ryan continued talking a good one — so good he had this writer convinced as well as some of boxing’s legendary greats (from Mike Tyson to Roy Jones, Jr.) that between Ryan’s unflinching confidence and his lightning left hook, he might actually give Gervonta some real problems. And we all twiddled our thumbs in suspense wondering if the 23–0 wonder kid from California could put a blemish on the perfect record of his opponent. We wondered all the way up until the fateful night of April 22, 2023, the night he met the Tank that would try to roll over his dreams, the iron tough small man who stood immovably before Ryan’s goals of becoming king.
In the other corner: meet Gervonta “Tank” Davis, boxing’s proverbial street brawler gone gallant aficionado of fists and fury. His hands turn to balls of thunder every time they strike his opponents. He’s been known to punch the fight clean out of some of today’s best in the lightweight division. His compact frame is packed tight as the bricks in a housing project. And just like project bricks, Gervonta’s skin is riddled in the markings of the brutal streets that reared him. Ole graffiti face boy, body marked up like a subway in Harlem and such, or better yet, a ghetto in Baltimore, Maryland, errrr… Bodymore, Murderland, as it has been menacingly yet accurately dubbed by its own residents. Yup, the same Bodymore, Murdaland we all fell in pained love with as we witnessed its hells and hardships on HBO’s The Wire for 5 seasons.
Tank grew up in those very war torn streets where he had to fight to survive since a child. He’s the real life version of one of those orphans in the group homes that a young Michael B. Jordan portrayed when Michael’s character screamed cynically and desperately at his teacher, “You gone take care of me!?” as his teacher abandoned him in the group home. Tank was that same kid when he was taken from his drug addicted parents’ home by Child Protective Services and placed into the foster care system at age 5. He was just as well the real life version of the kids that fought in the neighborhood boxing gym that we saw in Season 4, as he turned to a real life boxing gym at age 7 to release his rage and find “the love I wasn’t getting at home.” As a matter of fact, the character “Cutty” who portrays an ex-hustler turned boxing trainer upon his return from a prison bid, is based on Tank’s real life trainer Calvin Ford. So when Tank tattoos the word “Baltimore” on his back, and the ink droops down like the blood of the dead homies (particularly five fellow fighters from his gym, including Calvin’s son, that Tank lost in the years leading towards his eventual come up), he literally holds the city on his back. All its pain, all its treacherous danger, all its bravado and clap back. All its swagger and fuck you in the face of the police state that offs Black people with impunity, and the government sanctioned biochemical warfare that was the crack era and all the carnage it brought to Baltimore and [insert any other hood here]. All that grit and rage and sorrow and battle is carved into his skin.
But so is its dreams and hope and beauty. A rose blossoms a brilliant red from the center of his chest and reminds you of fellow once Baltimorean Tupac’s poem about the rose that grew from the concrete. The word “blessed” is engraved across Tank’s throat and we know that he doesn’t take his nascent success for granted. Wings bloom from the side of his neck and our thoughts ascend to whatever heaven may have inspired his vision. A beautiful picture of his daughter’s face sits right beneath the rose and atop his heart. On the other side, the distorted mug of an old gorilla calls to mind the warrior, the relentless force of nature we know Tank to be. Beneath are more gorillas with their eyes ex’d out. Right above them is a picture of Chucky, the fictional play doll that murders people. His eyes too, are ex’d out. I won’t for two seconds try understanding the slow avalanche into madness that his mid torso tattoo aesthetic seems to depict. That may be too deeply anchored in Black millennial/ Generation Z hood zeitgeist for this old school boom bap generation X-er to accurately ascertain. I will say though, that it’s as though we descended from the heavens of Tank’s upper regions into the hells of his lower ones. Heaven at his neck and near corpses gathered round his belly. As if to say, I had to swallow all this ugly to manifest all this beauty.
And his fighting aesthetic mirrors a similar duality. On one hand, he dances around his opponents exemplifying a footwork that calls to mind some of the greats from Ali to Sugar Ray. When opponents advance, he baits them into a foolish confidence as he absorbs at least a few of their best shots with the chin of a Holyfield. But for the most part — especially in his more recent fights as competition has escalated — he leaves them coming up short as they swing and miss at his newfangled bob and weave tactics that call to mind the style of his mentor, Floyd Mayweather. Then, just as they get overzealous, Tank is known to unleash knockout punches that pulverize his opponents to the canvas with such devastation, he’s been called the baby Mike Tyson of the lightweight division. In short, he’s where the aesthetics of Ali and Frazier, Sugar Ray and Hagler, Mayweather and Mike Tyson meet in a fiercely dynamic combo. Take the footwork and sweet science of all the formers, and the knockout power of all the latter boxers, and throw in a healthy (yet pathetically slept on) ring IQ for good measure, and you’ve got Gervonta “Tank” Davis, the face and future of boxing. Here’s a guy who obviously studied all the best tricks of his predecessors and cooked them down into one grab bag of phenomenal athletic aptitude. And yet for all of his amazing achievements through each of his first 28 wins en route to a perfect record, he still had at least one major obstacle towards fully claiming the title of the face of boxing today — Ryan Garcia.
I just can’t wait to be King: a glimpse at Ryan Garcia
I first discovered Ryan Garcia earlier this year after I stumbled over Tank’s fight with Rolly Romero. Watching Tank send Romero into wobbly legged shock with a singular left hook in the 6th round instantly convinced me that Tank was as real as the rumors said. This lead me to plunging down a wormhole of all things Tank Davis and marveling at what looked like the return of boxing to its truest highest form. Shouts out to Deontay Wilder for bringing fierce knockout power back to boxing, but what Tank displayed looked a little more promising, as it was accompanied by a much more well rounded and developed set of boxing skills. Besides, even if I was wrong, I was getting a chance to get on this ride a little closer to the ground level as opposed to catching it towards its twilight like I did with Wilder. Hopefully there would be no god awful abrupt conclusion to this ride like what Tyson Fury did to Wilder just as Wilder was about to solidify his legend. And then came the voice of a boisterous, exceedingly confident challenger to Tank’s throne, calling him out in media again and again.
Enter: Ryan Garcia aka King Ry aka The Flash. If his second moniker is still in question, no one can deny the accuracy of the third one. Ryan’s punches flash before your eyes so quickly you’re left with little more than an avatar of his hand having traveled into the future and then returned to his body before you could even decipher what spark of light just crossed your eyes. Muhammad Ali’s quick jab of course comes to mind, but maybe even faster. But unlike Ali, Ryan’s punches don’t sting like a bee. They crash like Thor’s hammer and knock muthafuckas the fuck out before they even realize what hit them. He’s like a mix of Thor and Peter Parker in the ring. While his boyish teen model looks further amplified by his massive social media presence coupled with several lucrative corporate sponsorship deals often distract his opps from realizing the deadliness of his infamous left hook, he hits them with lightning speed and force that floors them with deafening surprise.
His fights with former champion Javier Fortuna and Olympic gold medalist Luther Campbell showed the devastation that hook can do when it reaches the body, as he left them both crumpled in defeat on impact. And with many of his other knockouts (he had 19 in total leading up to his face-off with Tank), his headshots put his competition to sleep in swift seconds often ending his fights in the earlier rounds. He’s been known to showcase the freakish force of that hook with social media challenges where he suits up celebrity fighters in protective gear and then punches them in their torso until they collapse, writhing in pain. YouTube boxer Logan Paul has fallen every time. As a matter of fact, Ryan may have knocked out every challenger except UFC Heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou. These types of playful antics are not only what have turned Ryan into an internet superstar, but also bolstered his star power enough to take on boxing’s biggest star right now in the form of Tank.
And yet as I discovered all this, nothing was nearly as scary as Ryan’s staunch belief in himself. When he beat Campbell, he said that before it even happened, he’d predicted and seen in a vision, the exact round and the exact shot he’d use to dispose of him. When asked how he finds such success in the ring, he said that he goes into a place so deep inside of himself that he can kind of predict what the other fighter’s gonna do before he does it. Meanwhile, he himself gets into a rhythm that feels almost guided like a meditation, such that he achieves what he’s already envisioned by merely flowing with his internal rhythm. In short: he seems to achieve his victories nearly effortlessly. What he described sounded like the zone that Michael Jordan used to describe when he’d pull off one of his 60 point nights. That place where practice, discipline and muscle memory form an internal alignment that meets with an external challenge that brings out the best in a performer.
And that best creates a nearly divinely perfect performance: the holy moment of creation in arts that renders Hendrix’s Woodstock performance, Biggie’s Life After Death album, Jordan’s Game 6 moment(s), Muhammad Ali’s defeat of Liston, Frasier, Foreman — take your pick. Boxers too are artists. And at their finest, can be righteous renderers of well crafted savage destruction. It’s even scarier when the artist waxes meta, when they know how to access that place of near perfect creation — errr… destruction in this case, when we’ve seen them do it again and again. That’s an even scarier place if you’re on the receiving end of that destruction. Hence, after going down the Tank wormhole that lead to the Ryan Garcia wormhole, I emerged a slightly changed fan. I emerged a little scared for Tank.
“Now it’s on and it’s on because i say it’s on…”
I discovered Garcia, oddly enough, only a week before the very night that the fight between he and Tank was announced. I felt synchronistically destined to engage this showdown from that moment on. Thus, I hunted every moment leading up to it: from the NY press conference to the LA press conference to the weigh in and all the sidebar interviews and shit talking in between. In the war of words, Ryan only worried me more. His articulation of his plans for Tank were so crystal clear and his confidence so concrete that he seemed impenetrable. (Think: a soft model boy version of Drago’s deadpan, “I will destroy you” but with the same convincing level of self-assuredness.) He damn near made Tank seem see through in ways I hadn’t fathomed theretofore. His enthusiastically sure, “You’re going to sleep in 2 rounds!” delivered on Mike Tyson’s podcast seemed like a force to be reckoned with.
And while Tank responded in kind, warning Ryan that he had gotten knocked down by a much lesser puncher and opponent in the form of Luther Campbell, and though Tank had been joking that he would “kill that kid” but that “he could be my sparring partner though,” since years before when Ryan first started calling Tank out after fights, even Tank eventually started to seem a bit humbled by the relentless onslaught of hyper-confident blather coming from King Ry. When a separate podcast interviewer brought up Ryan’s two round KO threat, Tank seemed genuinely attentive to it and maybe even a bit taken aback. Ever the humble warrior, Tank raised his brows in light surprise and just smiled as though he couldn’t believe how little his future opponent thought of him — almost as though he was considering whether it could be true. In short, between this and a few other reticent responses I observed from Tank as I submerged deeper down the Tank vs Ryan wormhole, my worry for Tank grew like a persistent mold. I needed to see this fresh new hope in boxing ripen to fruition before it all went bad like when Buster Douglas crushed Mike Tyson in his prime.
All I could do was keep falling back on the fact that it seemed to my relatively young boxing eye, that Tank had fought more mature, huskier and more skilled opponents. That he had a higher knockout percentage (by only 10% with 26 knockouts in his 28 fights) and that maybe there was just something Tank knew that we couldn’t all suss out on first sight. I heard that theory supported by several boxers like Mike Tyson, Tyson Fury, Deontay Wilder, Shakur Stevenson and [insert random no name boxer in a gym in Any City, USA here] who, when interviewed about the upcoming fight, would say things to the effect of yeah I think Tank just has a little bit more ring knowledge and his experience is gonna edge Garcia out. Or even more to the point as told by Tank’s big bro in boxing Adrien Broner, “there’s just layers to this that Tank got that I just don’t think Ryan has reached yet.” I figured that between that and Tank’s honed fighter instincts, seasoned as they were by the war-torn streets of Baltimore, that there were certain lessons embedded in Tank’s muscle memory, that the makeshift homemade gyms of Ryan’s youth, nor his daddy’s training (more on both of those later) could ever teach Ryan.
Which is to say, despite Ryan’s obvious gift of gab and his eventual victory in the pre-fight war of words, I hoped that there was something in Tank’s ultimate makeup and experience that Ryan could never touch. Something that perhaps the public couldn’t see without properly trained eyes… be they boxer eyes or culturally acculturated eyes. It was the boxer eyes of the vets that could tell Tank’s bag of tricks was deeper, his fundamental skill set more sound, and that unless a lucky miracle prevailed on the 22nd, he would probably edge out Ryan. It was my cultured eyes that made me look a littler deeper into the banter of interviews and suss out that maybe the kid who claimed his favorite movie was The Lion King might not actually have the “dog in em” to beat the kid whose favorite movie was Paid in Full (as Ryan and Tank respectively stated on the “All the Smoke” podcast). The former movie is about a pretend cartoon cub who just can’t wait to be king. The latter is about real life drug dealers who try not to be murdered over being drug dealers but ultimately go in for the proverbial greed-driven kill as one offs the other. All I could hope was that between that stark contrast of realities, buttressed by Tank’s constant reminders to Ryan and his team that Ryan just “ain’t built like that,” that maybe Tank could make Ryan wait a little longer to be king, if not vanquish those hopes altogether.
The psychology of the punch
But before investigating how the theories about the two fighters got tested in the ring, it’s probably worth considering each of these fighters’ backgrounds a bit more. If for nothing else but to better understand, as I’d like to dub it, the psychology of the punch. In one corner, you have a young man who was born into relative middle class privilege. Privilege that lasted right up to about the point when he started fighting. As the story goes, Ryan’s family owned a nice home in a neighborhood called Hunters Ridge in California. That is, until financial hard times hit the family just around the time of the great Housing Recession, and the family lost their home, forcing them to live out of their car and on the road for some time in Victorville, California. Ultimately, Ryan’s dad, a former boxer himself now turned trainer, set up a small boxing bag atop a makeshift patch of fake grass. Ryan pursued the craft with enthusiasm and proceeded up the ranks swiftly stacking up in regional victories and awards. He ultimately topped out of the amateurs with a stellar 215 wins and only 15 losses. Some have said that his aggressive ambition as a boxer was motivated by the fear spawned by his family’s glimpse into the abyss of poverty. He himself confessed on his last interview on Mike Tyson’s podcast, only a few days before the fight, that so much of the will to win is motivated by the fear of failure. Perhaps it’s appropriate to think of the thunderclap of his past trauma as the premise to the lightning in Ryan’s arms. The dark abyss from whence his flashes of luminous fury emanate.
Or further, perhaps the furious fists of King Ry call to mind the fire and brimstone justice that his religious persuasion endorses. Think of him as the noble knight on a crusade to bring order and righteousness to the ring. To civilize the savage beast with his hammer hands. Reach much? Well there is Ryan’s initial motivation to fight Gervonta based on Tank’s comments about Ryan’s parents looking like cousins. This made Ryan want “to put him in his place. He needed to be disciplined,” said King Ry. There’s also Ryan’s unsolicited commentary on Gervonta’s personal life as he made mention of Tank’s very public domestic violence case in a tweet from 2020. There’s also Ryan’s random tweets that lean towards right wing conservatism as they appraise, to put it lightly, the “inappropriate” acts of members of the “woke mob” that, in his eyes, defile the sanctity of his religion. And yet amidst his quasi-self righteousness, there’s the shit talking in interviews that would nearly sound like bullying if he was anywhere near the A-card approaching the fight with Tank. Anyone who finds it hard to reconcile how the same kid who constantly praises his Lord and savior Jesus Christ publicly and speaks of being an inspiration for others (as Ryan often does in interviews and on his social media) can simultaneously wax as brashly as he does against his opponents, hasn’t paid much attention to the dual ethos of Christianity and colonialism that has always coupled tender handed proselytization (from the priest) with iron fisted pulverization (from the knights) for the sake of conquest (of land and people for wealth). Which is to say, the ontology of King Ry’s punch may reach beyond his childhood struggles. It may be anchored in the proverbial heavens, raining down an age-old conception of justice according to his perception of all that is good and right.
In the other corner is a young man born the inadvertent spoils of a long held war. As a Black child of the 1990s, Gervonta Tank Davis is all post-Jim Crow lynching and redlining, post-Civil Rights and Black Power clap back, post-heroine-laden urban disenfranchisement 70s, post-crack era embodiment of the perpetual eras of attempted destruction of his people. His punches are political and prophetic. His fists call back the indubitably Black rage of the crack 80s like Mike Tyson did during its height. Smashing like a battering ram through a trap house. Hitting with the percussive staccato of a Mac 11. As he told boxer Shawn Porter in a pre-fight interview, when asked about his hometown’s influence on him, “it made me that monster I am inside the ring.” He punches mu’fuckas like his childhood owes him something. Like he’s got old debts to settle. Like he’s trynna deposit enough fear in his opponents that they’ll forever remember who NOT to fuck with. Like he’s trying to shock enough awe from the crowd that it might birth admiration, that the admiration might turn to love. Again, a former Baltimore resident comes to mind.
Tupac said, “Somebody gotta explain why my niggas ain’t got shit.” And whether he’s debilitating his opponents with one of his devastating blows or doing celebratory nigga we made it donuts in his Lambo in the middle of Baltimore to the backdrop of police sirens as 12 clocks him and the homies who have taken over the streets for the day and night, Tank carries a “Strictly for my Niggaz” vibe about him. And it’s the same when he’s paying for the funeral of a young Black woman salon owner who was senselessly murdered in her shop. And it’s the same when he’s repping the dead homie on one side of his T-shirt and “Free Cassanova” on the back of his T-shirt as he enters the ring. And it’s the same when he exits after the KO and walks back to his locker room to greet the mother of said dead homie, who received free tickets to the fight along with some 100 kids from a local orphanage in Baltimore. As he said in a pre-fight interview on Showtime’s All Access, “it’s not just me that’s fighting this battle, it’s people that’s walking with me day in and day out… this win over Ryan, it’s more than just a fight for me. It’s for all of us.” In short, when Gervonta wins, the block wins. And every iteration of Black block consciousness as we’ve known it, lives to see another day. Which is to say, we can imagine him punching with all the love of a man trying to save his endangered people, with all the rage of a man who knows what it is to feel his life inexplicably endangered. It was on April 22nd, that the thunderous clap of Tank’s fists would meet the lighting sharp execution of Ryan’s. But first, the storm had to brew its final stages… in the pre-fight press conferences.
…The thunder and lightning before the storm…
When it all starts to come to a head, it’s still very unclear what the outcome will be. At the first press conference in New York, Showtime’s All Access footage showed Tank getting his haircut at the time the press conference started. Ryan’s Golden Boy Promotions crew, replete with legendary former champions Oscar De La Hoya and Bernard Hopkins as promoters, alongside acclaimed trainer Joe Goossen, were already present. As they sounded off on the “unprofessionalism” of showing up late to the pre-fight events of boxing’s biggest fight in years, Tank was pluming his purple fur coat in preparation for departure. Once his team arrived nearly 2 hours late, Tank’s trainer Calvin Ford was the first to step to the mic. After greeting everyone in his usual gracious manner, Calvin talked up the fight passionately and even literally confessed his anxiousness saying, “Man y’all got me tremblin! I can’t wait for that night!” I couldn’t tell if that tremble was an admittance of fear or just an overwhelming abundance of enthusiasm.
Tank sat calmly behind purple shades and was slow to speak as usual. A man of few words, his reticent speech patterns call to mind the Sonny Listons, Joe Frasiers and George Foremans of yesteryear. Like his predecessors, he lets his fists do most of the talking in the ring. Also like them, his lack of verbosity may be part of what gets him pigeonholed as being unintelligent, a notion that may have implications for why many pay too much attention to his brawling skills while overlooking his extremely high ring IQ.
For both Tank and Ryan, the first conference was pretty mellow. Ryan kicked things off relatively humbly, giving God all the glory saying, “My power comes from within and from above. I don’t look like I hit hard, but I hit hard,” and then escalating with “The punches come quick but when they hit you, you’re down.” Tank, equally humble, repped Baltimore saying “a lot of people don’t make it from there so… I’m just happy to be apart of this fight.” They both spoke to the importance of the fight with Tank stating that “both of us are at our peak [and] a lot of young fighters don’t fight each other so this is a stepping stone for a lot of other young fighters to get in the ring with each other.” Garcia chimed in with “it’s been hard to get prime fighters together [and] this is a moment that boxing has been waiting for for awhile.” The trash talking was minimal now that they were in each others presence. In fact, they were both respectful enough to acknowledge each other as worthy opponents and as one of the best in boxing.
But the friction began to reveal itself when Ryan’s promise of a 2-round knockout was brought up and Tank commented that Ryan “was talking out his ass”. Ryan shot back “well somebody had to sell [the fight]. I got here on time.” “You supposed to be like that,” Tank shot back. The dig seemed to confuse Ryan who replied, “What do you mean?” But the innuendo was somewhat clear for those who understood Tank’s late arrival as the flex that it was. Tank seemed to be dictating the terms of even this press conference according to his whims, reminding Ryan and everyone who the real big dog was in this fight. And to make it absolutely clear, when asked what Ryan Garcia was getting on April 22nd, he smirkingly replied, “an ass-whooping.” Asked what we could expect from him on the 22nd, Ryan simply “guarantee[d us] a classic.” Tank had the final word assuring the audience that the winner of the fight would be whoever was “built like that” and “got that dog in em.” The presser finished with a formidable face-off, with both fighters standing inches away from each other’s faces, unflinchingly. Then inaudibly trash talking each other beneath the barrage of flickering lights, respective entourages in tow.
The second press conference jumped coasts to Ryan’s neck of the woods, Los Angeles. This time Ryan intentionally hung around in his hotel waiting for Tank and his team to arrive before he would come down. A flex for a flex if you will. Ryan needed to assure that he wasn’t left waiting twice. When Team Tank arrived, Ryan mockingly waved at them from his balcony on high as they walked over a dozen stories below. Tank returned the gesture with a middle finger. The shenanigans had begun. And they hadn’t even met up yet. Once they did, the two clashed instantly on the dais. This presser started with a face-off, one that felt like it was spearheaded by the fighters themselves. As soon as Tank mounted the stage to meet a waiting Ryan, Tank’s fist went immediately to the side of Ryan’s chin, nearly touching it. Then Ryan returned the gesture only to have his fist brushed away by Tank. Inaudible trash talk ensued. Tank returned his fist to Ryan’s chin with a light punching gesture that swept right beneath Ryan’s chin. Ryan backed up a bit, mouth smiling but brow furrowed, clearly a bit unnerved from the encroachment, and began shadowboxing the air in front of Tank. More inaudible trash talk followed, with only inches between the two fighters’ faces.
Once the MC had them sit down and the official conference started, the trash talk continued. As soon as Ryan took first to the mic and finished thanking God, he went on to acknowledge the gravity of the moment while proclaiming his confidence, stating “It’s such a big event but I know that I’m coming out on a top,” arousing the cheers of his hometown crowd. He proceeded to tell Tank how he would put him to sleep with his left hook. “What else?” Tank snapped back multiple times from his seat. “You don’t got no footwork, you don’t got no IQ, you don’t got nothing bro!” Tank continued. Ryan continued his trash talk. “When you get up here, you better finish a sentence,” Ryan said, building on prior comments that Tank couldn’t speak clearly. He capped things off by dissing Tank’s fashion choices (Ryan wasn’t a fan of Tank’s man purse) and then promising to knock him out on the 22nd. As for Tank, when it was his turn to take the mic, he found his tongue more succinctly and convincingly than he had in all the weeks theretofore, telling Ryan and the audience, “He don’t have nothing else but a hook. He not a completely fighter. On April 22nd, I’m gonna walk you to the deep waters, and I’m gonna drown you. They gonna have to pick you up and I promise you that!”
The rest of the conference proceeded with even more ramped up banter, mostly about Ryan’s left hook being his only asset. Ryan made the point that his hook downed Francisco Fonseca in one round, Fonseca being the only man that both boxers have fought and defeated professionally. Only Ryan did the job in one round and Tank took eight to do it. (This was one of those factoids that had fueled my concern for Tank when I first delved down the Tank vs. Ryan wormhole.) Then things dissolved into the petty. Ryan cooly hit Tank with a few more spicy jabs at his fashion choices: “You look like you fell through a rainbow… Like you dance with a unicorn. You woke up in a 2001 vintage store just stop man.” Not bad for a kid taking on the biggest fight of his career. Tank, appearing a bit more flustered than Ryan, eventually called Ryan out for being a fraud. He accused him of having tried to befriend him when they had an infamous run-in at a nightclub months ago. Ryan’s final words of the presser were, “I’m gonna knock him out.” Tank’s final retort was a mocking parroting of Ryan’s words, before closing out with an invitation to not miss a historical night of boxing because “it’s gonna be a good night… for me.”
The last press conference crescendoed all the energy that built in the previous three. Oscar De La Hoya sparked the drama by testing the mettle of Team Tank saying, “when I look at Tank’s team’s actions throughout the whole promotion, I am left to wonder do they really think this guy is ready?” Calvin Ford was none too pleased and let it be known. After telling Ryan directly that they were going to use him to send a message to all the other fighters, he sounded off “Stop playing with my youngin!” For his part, Ryan came out especially humble, damn near timid in his delivery. And so did Tank. Both seemed to be absorbing the gravity of the impending moment. But when the Q&A began, they delved into the obligatory trash talk. Ryan directed his ominous commentary towards Tank: “This is the moment where everything catches up to you.” Tank continued striking at the core with pointed critique of Ryan’s skills: “He don’t have the fundamentals at all. If Joe Goossen such a good trainer, fix his fundamentals.” Later, as the final face-off ensued, Tank pulled a move in step with his big bros and mentors Floyd “Money” Mayweather and Adrien “The Problem” Broner. He pulled out bags of cash as if to imply that Ryan wasn’t on his level. If you add this to Tank’s late arrival to the first presser, then this would constitute Tank’s second brash flex on Ryan. On two counts, he seemed to be telling the younger contender he wasn’t on his level. Only April 22nd would tell the full truth, but first, the weigh in.
The weigh in started off relatively calmly under the hot Las Vegas sun, but it climaxed with all the drama of an ancient gladiator fight. Ryan weighed in to the tune of the hoopla of his many West coast fans that had made the short trek from his home state of Cali. Despite the controversial rehydration clause that was supposed to have sapped him of his some of his power as it drained him from his usual 140 pound weight class down to the catch weight of 136 pounds, Ryan closed out his weigh in with a heroic flash of his signature left hook and the crowd rose in cheers accordingly. This was significant because the big concern about weight draining (the part of the rehydration clause that forces fighters to meet a certain weight and not gain any more than a set amount of weight after the weigh-in) is that it will leave a fighter depleted of energy, even visibly so, in which case the fight’s outcome is called into question. But Ryan not only showed himself healthy, he went on to gloat about it in the final face-off with Tank. As the two approached the mount, it was as obvious as impending rainfall on a tropical summer day, that this next and final escalation of the tension would bring the drama — maybe come to blows even, well with with the outcome of the last press conference. And it nearly did. “You look hungry,” or something of the sort was the shady comment from Tank as the two fighters inched towards each other. “Oh I feel strong! I feel so strong!” Ryan bragged as they inched even closer. The respective entourages followed in kind, like looming gray clouds ready to burst amidst an inevitable storm. The words and gestures from each young man continued to flash like lightning, rumble like threatening thunder.
As though in response to an ominous wind whispered from nearby, Tank turned his attention to someone to his left, standing behind the whole affair. He began barking back and forth with this man. It was Bernard Hopkins. The OG hovered above Tank telling him something no one could hear. Tank’s mouth opened wide as a heavy sky ready for release yelling at the older man wildly. The composed cool Tank we’d seen at the press conferences was gone. The young brawler who fought back to back with his brother in the streets of Baltimore “throwing dogs on them suckers running up on a young hog!” — that guy, he was fully present and accounted for. I rose in excitement with the moment, while quietly lamenting it all too. These guys were, after all, kids when it all came down to it. Tank only 29, Ryan only 24. After the weigh in, Mike Tyson, who stood only a few feet away from Bernard Hopkins and looked on somewhat puzzled at the shenanigans (the irony!), would chime in, “It’s too crazy. It’s too insane. Bernard’s fighting. Everybody’s fighting. Goddamn we making money. I was a asshole too when I was fighting. But we’re all making money. It’s a celebration.”
Later, on fight night, I would jokingly lament to a lady friend of mine how that moment embodied my troubled, contradictory relationship to my second favorite sport of boxing (football being my first). It embodies and exudes everything I love and hate about hypermasculinity’s most toxic traits. I mean, all hail the warrior element. (Where would humanity be without its valiant, violent reaches towards vainglory? World peace perhaps…? An end to imperialism…. climate change… I digress.) But sometimes I hate much of what comes with it. The back and forth climaxed as Tank looked away from Bernard Hopkins and put his attention back on Ryan. Ryan inched in a bit closer and his left hand brushed Tank’s right hand. It was on. The proverbial pushing and shoving and both teams jumping in from either side as the officiator jumped in the middle. The inevitable storm had arrived and it was time to let the fists of fury pour.
The fight: thunderclap… lighting…… el fin.
At the gates of destiny, both warriors stand awaiting entry.
The first thing you notice is the look on Ryan’s face… well after he removes his praying hands from in front of it. His skin is pallid and moist. The countenance is cool but not as nonchalant as we’ve grown used to, nor as aggressively confident. As the eyes open from prayer, they are small pebbles at the base of a mountain, humble fish before a vast sea. The brow is slightly furrowed, downcast, sheepish almost. He walks slowly and calmly, clearly taking in the massiveness of his present undertaking. His gloves are red. His designer Amiri robe is black. It’s giving Pacino Scarface vibes. But the soundtrack is calling down the heavens. “Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)” by a group called Hillsong UNITED is playing. (The song was recorded in Israel on the Sea of Galilee, you know where the guy they call Jesus used to preach.) As Ryan continues his walk, waving at fans and flashing his almost shy grin like he’s on the red carpet, the lyrics croon all celestial and ambient, “Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders. Let me walk upon the water.” King Ry seems to be calling in a higher power for what must seem like a David vs. Goliath level task. He seems to be beckoning a miracle. He stops ringside before entering and thrusts one valiant fist into the air and his fans roar. As he enters the ring and looks around he appears slightly awestruck by the 20,000 plus people surrounding him. Gervonta Davis’ admonitions from a pre-fight interview come to mind as I look on. “I think Ryan probably don’t know how big it’s gon be. That probably play a big factor in how the night go.” As King Ry seemingly oscillates between bravado and humility, concentration and people pleasing, the young lion looks to be a slightly timid cub in the moment. I never thought I’d see it happen but it looks as though the cool facade has grown a small fissure.
Then there’s Gervonta, the seasoned vet of big fight nights. The guy who’s already packed out Royal Farms Arena in his hometown of Baltimore (14,686), State Farm Arena in Atlanta (16,570), Barclays in Brooklyn (18,970). The first thing you notice is his purple gloved hands slamming against each other 3 times. The face is focused and lined in subtle fury. He’s got the no nonsense look of a man that came to do work. Like his kids broke his favorite coffee mug and everybody in the house bout to get it. Or better yet, like the neighborhood thugs around the corner just stole his son’s bike and he’s about to go lay hands on them. Chief Keef’s Sosa is playing. Chief Keef is hovering just over Tank’s shoulder rapping the lyrics. Chiraq and Bodymore, Murdaland meet. Tank bounces along to the first couple bars. Then Tank’s hops seamlessly segue into bouncing up and down a few times before he begins the ceremonial walk forward. The head is tucked down slightly, the short 5’5” frame is comfortably shrouded beneath the hovering figures of his entourage, and the gaze is narrow and insular as though he’s focused on the words on the back of a t-shirt directly in front of him. The crowd doesn’t seem to occur to him. But he more than occurs to them. When the small man reaches the side of the ring, the uproar that began with Chief Keef’s first bar reaches crescendo as Tank’s fans behold their champ.
The first round is a silent chess match. Only a total of 30 punches thrown — 23 from Ryan with only 3 landing and 7 from Tank with only 1 landing. Tank, known for being a selective puncher that studies his opponents for the first 3 to 5 rounds before wholly digesting them, is doing exactly what we expected him to do. He pares off Ryan’s approach by extending his hand and neutralizing the jab. We knew this would begin a cerebral match, as the two titans respected each other’s power. We also mostly expected that Ryan would be the one to bomb first, trying to exploit his explosive knockout power early in the fight before Tank had a chance to develop his own strategy. What we didn’t know was that Ryan would strike so eagerly and so early. Or what Tank’s strategy would be in defense of such swift aggression. By the second round, Ryan goes in for the kill. He launches an all out offensive leading with his notorious left hook. The first few missiles flare towards Tank’s head forcing him to take evasive action. Tank mostly makes use of ducking and grabbing, using his short height as an uncanny advantage to loom beneath Ryan’s quick shots, and when that fails, grabbing desperately at Ryan’s waist to regather his bearings. We saw Tank do similar in his bout with Rolly Romero, which ended abruptly when he walked Rolly’s aggression into one of his infamous pulverizing punches. The fateful minutes that lay in the balance of the rest of this night will determine if this bout will end similarly or not. I for one, am on peak adrenaline but also peak confidence that Tank will not disappoint.
After those few awkward exchanges of Ryan swinging wildly at Tank’s head, Tank ducking most of the shots (taking only two or three of them to the side of the head but nothing especially direct or solid) and then grabbing for Ryan’s waist to slow him down, it’s clear that a pattern is emerging. By the fourth exchange or so, Tank lunges at Ryan before Ryan can even set up to try and deliver the same punishment. It’s becoming clear, that Tank is grappling for his bearings (a sportscaster even comments that he’s “turning this into a wrestling match”), but somehow the promise of his technical skill and power still loom right beneath the surface of what is starting to look like a shaky situation. I still believe he’ll pull through though. And about two exchanges later, he does. By the 5th exchange or so, Ryan throws 3 wild hooks and misses all of them as Tank ducks them. It’s clear Tank has Ryan’s number now.
The next time Ryan overconfidently swarms in with another attempted barrage of punches, leading with his left hook, he swings right over Tank’s head and misses again. No sooner than his left hand completes its rotation, leaving his head absolutely exposed, he meets a solid left hook to the face that sneaks upwards as Tank creeps up from below. Bam! Just like that. Ryan is flat on the canvas. I leap from my chair and yell some supportive obscenities for my boy Tank. Everybody at the fight party I’m at goes wild. It’s in this swift moment that Tank separates the proverbial boys from the men, and reveals those levels that fighters like Adrien Broner and Shakur Stevenson had been saying he’d edge Ryan out with the whole time. The way he did it, was eerily similar to how he floored Romero two fights prior. (Hence, why I wasn’t too worried about Ryan’s onslaught.) But while the moment was swift, the build up was more intricate and subtle.
For the less technical boxing fan, here’s the simple breakdown. Tank allowed Ryan to advance the way that he did throughout the second round because that’s what Tank does. In the post-fight interview, Tank would say that he and Ryan were more or less “reading each other’s energy” in the first few rounds. Once he saw Ryan advance not once, not twice, not three times, but a good 5 or 6 times with the same tactic, Tank had read Ryan’s offense while simultaneously surviving the worst of it. He now knew that Ryan would lead in with the left leg to support his launch of his left hook. One of the fundamental points of fighting in this aggressive way, is to get first dibs on the positioning of your legs on the outside of your opponent’s legs. This is done so that your opponent can’t step outside of your lead leg and position himself to counterpunch. As stated, swinging with the left hook leaves your head entirely exposed to a counterpunch. This is even more dangerous when you’re fighting a southpaw fighter like Tank, because his non-traditional stance positions him in such a way as to be more prepared to counterpunch from the left in the first place.
The irony of course is that Ryan cooly promoted himself as the “southpaw killer” in several interviews. And yet, here he was making one of the most fundamental mistakes a boxer can make in fighting a southpaw, particularly one as powerful as Tank. Tank planted his right leg strategically outside of Ryan’s left leg as Ryan wound up to throw his hook. (On my umpteenth viewing of the footage, I could almost see Tank playing with that setup of his feet a few exchanges before the knockdown.) So as soon as Ryan finished missing, Tank was in perfect position, with the perfect leverage to offer a knockout counterpunch. Ryan could have paid for that mistake with an abrupt loss of the fight but the night wasn’t over yet. Just like he did the one other time in his career that he got knocked down (by Luther Campbell) for leaving his face similarly exposed, Ryan popped right back up. He shook it off quickly to convince the ref that he was good to go. But it was clear he’d been touched, significantly. A drop of red emerged faintly from his nose.
The next couple rounds reveal Tank’s power if for nothing else but it’s reverb. Ryan keeps a safer distance for rounds 3 and 4. His youthful enthusiasm seems sapped as he’s hesitant to encroach as aggressively as he did in Round 2. When he does, many of his punches miss as Tank faints the jab and blocks or dodges the hook, neutralizing Ryan’s offense, while beginning to substantially succeed in his own. His game plan: consistent long jabs to the body slowly breaking Ryan down. Tank’s jabs are ironically even more of a full body event than many of his hooks and uppercuts. He leaps from his lower position using his whole body, but especially his legs, to power the punch. And yet, the punches are still incredibly fast and precise. This is a huge feat considering how well timed a punch has to be for someone to leap into it and still successfully land it without overly advertising it beforehand.
And yet, land he does, again and again for the next two rounds, selectively and intermittently. Ryan doesn’t seem to regain his confidence until Round 5 when he starts launching a few more of those bombs on Tank. But even as he does so, he is more flinching in his defense, conveying a mousy jitteriness when bringing his guard to his face, damn near cringing and cowering from Tank’s body shots when he tries to dodge them. At one point, when Ryan cringes from Tank’s onslaught and turns his back to Tank, Tank plants one right beneath his left rib for that misstep. At another point, when Ryan turns his back to Tank again, Tank wraps him up and Ryan spins around in a circle while wrapped up. Once the ref breaks them up, Tank mockingly dances a bit of a pirouette during the brief break to alert the ref to the illegality of Ryan’s move. But it also seems to suggest he’s playing Ryan like his own windup toy. Tank’s game plan has all but taken over.
When Ryan tries to turn the tide more aggressively in round 6, he finds himself coming up mostly short, missing Tank with his wild hooks, though he does successfully land a few to the head that get him some loud roars from the crowd. What I know, what any real Tank fan knows, what Ryan must know deep down inside, is that if the night continues like this, Ryan is going to either walk into another tough hook that will leave him floored, or perhaps just as embarrassingly, lose the fight on the cards as Tank is clearly walking away with the majority of the rounds. This will prove Tank the definitively superior fighter on all levels, from knockout power to strategy to fighting IQ. Many of those who said Ryan could take it said that if he didn’t knock Tank out in the first two rounds, Tank would have to beat him by round 7 or 8, otherwise Ryan would win by decision. Yet here it is at the end of a round 6 that Ryan did take, but it is only his second. Tank is up 4 rounds to 2. These type of numbers put major pressure on a boxer, particularly when they’re on the undercard. It means they have to fight way more aggressively to win a decision. And Ryan is looking at a now very high summit that requires him to win 5 of the next 6 rounds in order to climb to victory. That warrants more aggression even though he has just experienced what aggression can yield against a force like Tank. And yet, to Ryan’s credit, he proceeds boldly once again in round 7. Not so worthy of credit, is the lack of sound strategy and fundamental boxing skills, and the reckless abandon he proceeds with.
When the fateful bell rings, Ryan comes out tentative but ready to swing, presumably on the heels of confidence gleaned from the previous round. He hits Gervonta with a solid two jab combo that backs him to the ropes at the beginning of the round. Tank ducks the rest of that exchange dancing beneath Ryan’s follow up punches. For the next minute, Tank cleverly pares off Ryan’s attempt at any jabs by keeping his arm extended towards Ryan, his purple glove on Ryan’s red one, as both sensor and filter for any punches that might come through. And so they don’t. Ryan’s jab is virtually neutralized, as it has been for most of the fight. With barely a jab, and minimal efficacy form his wild hooks, not to mention his growing wariness from the accumulation of Tank’s body shots, Ryan starts to look a bit like a wounded animal halfway through Round 7. He lands one more left jab to Tank’s head, but he doesn’t seem to know what to do about those shots coming in return. On one of the final ones, Ryan jumps back and repositions himself but as the camera angle shifts, it is clear that the red dot that emerged from his nose in Round 2 has stretched into a small line now leaking towards his top lip. At this point, a mere flinch from Tank, causes Ryan to timidly throw his guard up in panic. And when he blocks what might come to the face, Tank creeps down low and marauds his body.
As Ryan winds up another typical onslaught, throwing punches that fly just above Tank’s head, Tank seems to have landed another counterpunch body shot. It’s hard to tell as the camera is focused on Ryan’s taller body hovering and swinging wildly over Tank’s shorter one looming below. But what we do see is Ryan’s body slightly jolt from apparent impact just as he finishes swinging. Then he steps back in a way both characteristic at this point and brand new. After the first step back, he sticks his arm out at Tank, paring off any further pursuit. The timidity of the move is consistent with what Ryan had been showing with all the wincing and flinching of the past few rounds. But it is a bit more dramatic and visible than the others and it is also the first time he seems to be in open retreat. He slides back once more and then collapses to one knee. His nose is now openly streaming blood. He looks up once as though considering a return but then bows his head again. The ref is counting by now and is up to 8. Ryan looks up at the ref and then looks back down. As the ref says “10!” Ryan reluctantly stands up. And just like that, the king has been slain.
The crowd goes wild. Both in the arena and at the fight party at the homeboy’s house. “It was that body shot!” I and a few of us start yelling. “He’d been breaking him down every round and it got to him!” “He must’ve cracked that rib!” someone else, maybe me, cries out. Not exactly boxing experts, none of us are privy to the science of a liver shot. What I go on to brag to random others I run into that night was a knockout by way of rib crack, was actually due to Tank’s successful shot to Ryan’s liver. Ironically, this is the same shot that Ryan beat Luther Campbell with in the exact same round. The same shot that Ryan’s promoter Bernard Hopkins beat his other promoter the legendary Oscar De La Hoya with back in the day. It’s one of the most devastating punches in boxing. It sends the liver, a vital organ, into such a high state of panic, that the nervous system literally shuts down momentarily as a method of protective self preservation. Think: a possum playing dead or a turtle into its shell. In short, when the liver gets hit, the body goes into retreat mode. It has to stop functioning for a second so that it doesn’t stop functioning forever.
There are those who would argue for weeks to come that Ryan should have dug deep, got up, found a way to keep fighting. But that was his liver talking and it talked louder than all of the critics, louder than all of his own boyish ambition, egoistic claims and desires for greatness. Sometimes for all the magic and miracles we want to conjure, the basic science of cause and effect conquers us. For all the vainglorious heights we aim to attain, reality grounds us. Ryan poetically dreamt and spoke himself up into the king ready to claim the throne. Just turns out Tank was the more seasoned and worthy warrior. The lighting struck. But the thunder had the last word.
The calm after the storm and the storms ahead (epilogue)
Are you the face of boxing?” the announcer asked Gervonta in the in-ring post-fight interview. The former 3 division belt-holder grinned from ear to ear and gleamed, “Abso-fucking-lutely!” When given a chance to speak, Ryan Garcia remained anchored in his faith and took his loss like a champ. “We talked a lot of shit coming up in here, but he knows what it is — it’s all love at the end of the day,” he told Tank before giving thanks to “Jesus Christ for all he does in my life.” At the post-fight press conference, a humbled Ryan strugglingly held his head upright before a mostly hollow arena. The words of both fighters echoed through the space. “I ain’t got no excuses. I just couldn’t get up,” Ryan told one prying journalist. Tank conceded that Ryan “was the best fighter” he’d faced yet but critiqued his nervous, scattered approach like a coach speaking on his trainee. Ryan humbly nodded in agreement.
When asked to respond to possible future contender and 4 belt-holder of the lightweight division Devin Haney’s commentary about a future bout, Tank refused. “He need to focus on May the 20th,” Tank said, referring to Devin’s approaching fight with the Ukrainian sensation Vasiliy Lomachenko. “This my moment.” At the end, Tank and Ryan capped things off exchanging phone numbers and flicking it up for the cameras, after Tank even gave Ryan’s mom a hug. Mysteriously absent from the whole conference was most of Ryan’s Golden Boy promotions team, including promoters De La Hoya, Bernard Hopkins and trainer Joe Goossen. For his part, Ryan remained focused on his ultimate goal of moving up to the 140 weight class and taking on whoever they’ve got for him.
Wherever his next steps take him, Ryan’s imprint on boxing is indelible at this point. While he may have lacked the mettle to actually earn the crown, his dreamy reach for it lent a much needed spark to the entire boxing industry that will ripple for years to come. The after effects are are already apparent with new, long overdue fights popping up seemingly every other week. It seems that boxing’s more astute pros are taking a cue from the young dreamer and making long desired fights come to fruition in division after division. In the welterweights we’ve got the clashing of two of the greatest pound for pound fighters in the game today with Errol Spence, Jr. taking on Terrence Crawford at the end of July. And just recently, we’ve finally gotten a September date this year for the long awaited light middleweight bout between Canelo Alvarez and Jermell Charlo. So win or lose, Ryan’s sacrifice seems to have paid off for everyone else. Perhaps dying on your own sword for the sake of your realm is the most kingly thing that can be done, whether you’re worthy of the crown or not.
As for Tank, the road ahead will more than likely lead towards walking down his last few worthy opponents in the lightweight division, namely Devin Haney (who did go on about a month after Tank vs. Ryan, to solidify his undefeated record and unification of all the lightweight belts with a unanimous, yet questionable defeat of Lomachenko) and the young and indomitable Shakur Stevenson. Tank’s already clearly stated his desire for an early retirement after he “get(s) those other guys out of the way.” But it was Gervonta’s pre-fight interview with Showtime, even before he was crowned as the new face of boxing, that probably said best where he stands: “When people say ‘legacy’ I feel like you gotta picture where I came from. I already done enough. I don’t wanna be cocky cause I want people to understand where I come from. I’m already a legend. It’s a lot more ahead of me, but I came a long way.”
