By: Gregoire Beda
After fourteen months of trials and tribulations outside of the ring and built up animosity from previous sparring, Gervonta Davis defeated Frank Martin by knockout in the eighth round on Saturday at MGM Grand in Las Vegas to retain his WBA lightweight championship.
Davis made his first appearance since his vicious knockout against Ryan Garcia and serving his 44 days in Baltimore detention center last summer for violating his house arrest from a hit-and-run crash that injured four people.
“It made me a better person with patience and things like that,” Davis said. “Stuff in life you have to go through it and not try and go around it. It has made me a better person, a better father and a better athlete. “Most importantly, I want to just get back to the drawing board and just get back to the gym and stay focused. I felt a little rusty.”
“Yeah, there’s a little rust, but it’s OK. I’m back,” Davis said. “A couple rounds, I feel as though I ain’t warm up completely how I wanted to. I did warm up, but I got cold as the fight was going on before me. But it’s OK. No excuses.”
Davis delivered the finish with a left uppercut, straight left combination along the ropes. After knocking Martin out, Davis climbed onto the ropes and stuck a backflip in celebration.
“Boom, that’s what it was,” Davis said of the left hand that finished the fight. “The brick just finished it off. I’ve been training since I was 7 years old, competing since I was 8. You know what I mean? So it’s like a second nature, you know what I mean? It’s just about staying focused and making sure my mind is on the goal, and that’s always to come out on top.”
Embed from Getty ImagesMartin had the first three rounds under his belt but Martin admitted he got little to comfortable that allowed Davis to apply pressure from the fourth round to the knockout round in the eighth.
“I felt like in the beginning I was in control, then I got a little too comfortable,” Martin said. “I got comfortable chilling on the ropes, trying to find that bigger shot. It wasn’t presenting itself. I stopped doing my movement. … He came in and landed a big shot, and it was a shot I didn’t see. Really, I just didn’t see the shot.”
Davis who is now 30-0 with 28 knockouts, will have options for his next match, including potential meetings with IBF titleholder Vasiliy Lomachenko, WBC titleholder Shakur Stevenson and WBO titleholder Denys Berinchyk.
