One of the key marketing elements that promoters love to exploit was missing from Saturday’s Gervonta Davis-Ryan Garcia game in Las Vegas: Not a single title was at stake.
And guess? That didn’t detract one bit from the exciting nature of the match, which will take place in an attractive 136-pound weight class.
Fans are not stupid. They know that shiny belts aren’t worth much more than the material used to make them because they simply have too much of it.
There are 68 champions if you accept the IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO as the primary organizations and allow them to have one champion in each of the 17 weight classes, 69 if you count the new WBC player weight class. That number gets bigger if you factor in side titles, which many people are willing to do.
To say the least, the redundancy of the headers is absurd.
That’s why Garcia doesn’t care that he hasn’t staged a major tournament in his seven-year career. His focus is on collecting big, meaningful battles, not jewels.
“For me, it’s just the belts that have been diluted,” Garcia said in an interview with DAZN last summer, long before the Davis deal was signed. “… The fact that I win the championship will just give people more ammo to be like, ‘Oh, it’s Ryan.’
“I don’t care about that. I needed to know in my heart that I had defeated someone I felt was a champion. If I beat Tank Davis, or when I beat Tank Davis, I feel like a champion regardless of whether he has a real belt or not.
“I would feel like a champion because the name has weight, his name has weight.”
Oscar De La Hoya, Garcia promoter and former six-division boxer, told Boxing Junkie that titles are important to most young boxers because they serve as springboards for larger and more lucrative events.
Davis (28-0.26 KOs) is a former two-division champion but neither he nor Garcia (23-0, 19 KOs) need belts to market themselves. They have achieved star status with one spectacular victory after another – including a total of 45 kills in 51 matches – and have millions of followers on social media.
Who needs titles?
“It’s a perfect sign that titles don’t matter at this level,” De La Hoya told Boxing Junkie. “When you have very famous fighters, nobody talks about whether they have or don’t have a title. Nobody talked about that. It’s all about the boxers, it’s all about who wins, it’s all about who becomes the face of boxing once he raises his hand.
“Titles are important when you’re up and down, when you’re not as famous as these fighters. World title doesn’t matter. People pay attention to that, it’s very, very important. But at this level, you’re talking about a completely different animal.”
De La Hoya mentioned the final title: The Face of Boxing, which Davis or Garcia can achieve.
The “golden boy” earned that prominent nickname in the 1990s and 2000s. And he believes Saturday’s winner will succeed Canelo Alvarez as the most important figure in the sport thanks to Unrivaled combination of ability and popularity.
“I feel like the last games Canelo will play in his career, he has the opportunity to really cement his legacy as one of the very, very good. … But guess what? Just around the corner are Gervonta Davis and Ryan Garcia, the next generation.
“…So I really feel that the winner of this fight will be the face of boxing.”
