Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis retained his undefeated record over the weekend. Just about.
In a bout in which he was heavily favoured, Davis retained his WBA lightweight title in a majority draw against Lamont Roach in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York — but not before a controversial incident in the ninth round.
In what was one of the more bizarre incidents seen in the ring in a major world title fight in recent memory, Davis dropped to one knee after Roach landed a punch and then approached his corner where he requested a towel to apparently wipe his eye.
The rules of boxing state that if a fighter drops to a knee it should be ruled by the referee as an official knockdown. However, instead Davis was issued with an informal warning by the official Steve Willis and a point was not taken from him.
Speaking afterwards, Davis said that ‘grease’ from a recent hairstyling had affected his vision and had prompted his decision to drop to a knee.
“I just got my hair done two days ago, and she put grease in my sh*t,” he said. “The shit was like, you know when you’re sweating and things like that and the grease came in my face and it burnt my eyes.”
Responding to raucous jeers from the audience, Davis added: “Damn, why are y’all booing like I’m saying bullsh*t? This is real facts. Come on, man! Look at my hair, I just got my sh*t done.”
The scorecards for the bout saw two draws at 114-114, while the third gave Davis a 115-113 advantage. Had a point been deducted from Davis for the apparent knockdown it would have resulted in the first defeat of his 31-fight career.
Addressing the incident, Roach said that he felt that he was the rightful winner of the fight.
“Honestly, I thought I should have won without that being counted a knockdown,” he said post-fight.
“I’m not the ref, you know what I’m saying, if he had to wipe sweat out of his eye he had to wipe sweat out of his eye. The rules do state if you take a knee it’s an automatic eight-count. If that was counted a knockdown, I would have won a majority decision.”
