Tank Davis and the issues with PBC's approach to building stars

Long post, so here's a summary: Tank being marketed as the face of boxing is horrible for the sport and his career has been so carefully managed that it makes AJ's rise to the top look difficult and impressive. The PBC formula for building up its stars through feeding them carefully selected in-house fighters paints a very misleading picture for casual boxing fans.

To start this post off before Tank fanboys get defensive: Tank is obviously a very talented boxer and one of the top lightweights out there at the moment. You don't get knockouts like the ones he has had over Rolly, LSC, and Pedraza unless you're genuinely heavy handed and he is great at taking advantage of openings/vulnerabilities.

Having gotten that over with, the level of competition he has faced so far in his career is laughable. I wanted to make this post to analyze his career so far given that he's now being billed by Showtime and PBC as "the face of boxing". The most impressive victory he's had was his win over Pedraza which was 6 years ago (I give him credit for beating an undefeated champion who has been competitive at 140). After that win, he's been fed a steady diet of mismatches and lower-level opponents to build up his highlight reel and prop him up as some unstoppable knockout machine. Let's take a look at his most recent fights:

Gamboa: the guy tore his achilles in the fight and it took Tank 12 rounds to get him out of there. Props to Gamboa for being tough as nails and hanging in there, but it's embarrassing that it took a supposed "P4P hardest puncher" that long to get the KO against a pensioner fighting with one leg. Win also has not aged well at all.

LSC: Tank's most famous KO and the one that always appears in promotional videos. Santa Cruz has had a good career but the guy started out at bantamweight so it's no surprise that he couldn't take Tank's power.

Barrios: Probably one of Tank's two best wins after the Pedraza KO. Barrios had a big size advantage over Tank and has solid fundamentals, but is a limited boxer who arguably lost against Akhmedov and was lucky to keep his WBA trinket to land the Tank fight. Tank struggled for a significant portion of the fight before getting the knockout. Barrios also revealed that he had a rehydration clause after Tank's win against Ryan Garcia, which makes the KO less impressive given his huge frame at 140 and the fact that he moved up to 147 for his next fight.

Cruz: I'll give Tank the benefit of the doubt since he claimed he injured his hand in this fight. An injured Tank was outworked, had a lot of trouble, and ended up taking a close decision, which is a bad look as Cruz is a very limited fighter. Sure, Cruz is fun to watch, but his go-to plan is to plod forward and swing for the fences (as seen in his fight against Cabrera).

Rolly: Big KO from Tank and another win that has aged poorly after the Barroso robbery. Rolly was still able to outwork Tank for most of the fight before walking straight into a shot with his hands down.

Hector Garcia: Good boxer whose main claim to fame was destroying Chris Colbert (another prospect which followed the PBC formula before getting exposed). The guy moved up from 130 and landed plenty of clean shots on Tank, gave him an even fight until the KO. The only high-level boxer that Tank has faced since Pedraza and for that he deserves some credit.

Ryan Garcia: One of the most overhyped fights of all time if you look at it for what it is: a person who destroys B-level fighters for a living against an undisciplined social media star who had never challenged for a world title before. The fight was intriguing for 1 round until it became clear that Tank was not going to walk into a Ryan Garcia left hook. Even with Ryan's obvious flaws, Tank didn't feel confident enough about challenging him at 140 (a weight he was a "world champion" at) and made the fight at a catchweight + rehydration clause. Don't think anybody who knows anything about boxing can claim Tank as a pound-for-pound talent off this performance against a guy who uses his hand speed and left hook to cover up his many deficiencies.

The trend in most of these fights (LSC, Barrios, Cruz, Rolly, Hector Garcia) is: Tank gets outworked until he finds an opening against the B-level opponent. Sure, you can claim LSC and Hector Garcia were excellent boxers at their natural weights, but they were B-level opponents at the weight they fought Tank at. Hardly the kind of stuff that cements you as one of the top boxers in the sport, but certainly makes it easy to market him as a KO artist who knocks out almost everybody he faces. He's had plenty of time to call out Loma, which was a fight that everybody has wanted to see for years, but he still hasn't done so. Probably a combination of PBC's management and Tank being content with making big money destroying lower-level opposition. Maybe we'll finally see this soon now that Loma's age is clearly affecting him in the ring.

We've already seen what happened to the two other major stars that PBC has produced already in Spence and Wilder. For Spence, there was an excellent thread on his career (https://www.boxingforum24.com/threa...spence-jr-into-its-proper-perspective.707387/). Note the similarities with Tank's career in how he was carefully maneuvered into becoming a star and then avoided top opposition (Crawford) for years. He eventually got destroyed against Crawford in a fight that should have happened 5 years ago: Spence would likely have lost anyway but we would have seen the best version of both fighters instead of the over-marinated trash that they charged $85 for. For Wilder, his extremely limited skillset was exposed against Ortiz in both fights (got preferential treatment after getting hurt in the first fight, was getting whooped in the second fight until the KO) and he was demolished by Fury.

Neither fighter was matched correctly for improving their skills, which would have better prepared them for their biggest fights. The end result is that fans got extreme mismatches that discredited the amount of talent these two boxers had. The boxing public was almost universally putting Spence in their P4P top 5 when his best win was the version of Kell Brook who had just gotten pulped by Golovkin at 160. Very gifted boxer who has spent his career in one division without taking on any big punchers: guy is entertaining but one-dimensional and this was brutally exposed last week. His pressure-fighting style worked against everybody he had faced and he was never forced to develop a plan B before the Crawford fight. As for Wilder, the guy is so stubborn that he probably never would have bothered to improve his skills anyway, but boxing fans missed out on fights against other top level HWs. We can say that he would have knocked them all out anyway but we'll never know how he would have fared against guys like old Wlad, Parker, Whyte, Hunter... Tank actually has other top opposition available for him at lightweight (something Spence didn't have much of at 147) and he should take those fights instead of Cruz 2 or Colbert to improve before facing the toughest opponents out there.

Fans should want their "face of boxing" to be a fighter who takes the toughest challenges and gives us the fights we want to see, not some guy whose career has been manufactured to paint them as a top P4P talent when they haven't faced any top opposition to confirm that. I'm tired of hearing Tank being called a 3-division champion when he has only won 1 legitimate belt (could be 2 belts soon now that Haney has moved up). I'm also ignoring his out-of-the-ring behavior (most boxers aren't upstanding citizens) but Tank stands out as an especially nasty piece of work.

I'm also tired of boxers like Tank getting all the attention while top-level foreign boxers like Usyk (who has faced the toughest opposition available and goes to other people's backyards) and Inoue (who destroyed the #1 fighter at 122 in his first fight at the division) receive much less promotion in the Western world. If Usyk and Inoue were American, they would receive much more credit for their accomplishments. The bias in boxing is absurd: you've got Espinoza suggesting that Inoue should move up to fight Tank and that it's "only 13lbs more". The guy started out at 108 and he's telling casual fans that Inoue should move up to 135. This is like telling Tank (who started out at 130) to move up to fight Jermell at 154 or fight Crawford at 147. 0% chance Tank wins that and he shouldn't have to do something like that to be considered a top fighter, so why even suggest that for Inoue? Absolutely ridiculous attempt by a Showtime executive to reduce the significance of Inoue's achievements so far and casuals are eating it up.

I've written out this entire rant because I'm a huge boxing fan and PBC's method of managing their stars is one of the biggest issues with modern boxing. I'll eat my words if Tank takes on Shakur/Teofimo soon (he's a champion at 140 right??), but I doubt either of those two fights are happening anytime soon because they're the two biggest challenges for him. When/if he does eventually face either of the two, he'll struggle a lot more than he would have if he had been facing higher-level opponents throughout his career, and fans will get a worse fight as a result. Knocking out undersized opponents and insisting on advantages in every fight does not make you a good representative for the sport. Before people start complaining about Canelo doing the same, yes, he does. His path to undisputed at 168 is still more impressive than Tank's entire career so far.

 

Respect your opinion but if we look at Haney and Teofimo's careers, they've shown that they're willing to take big risks to make the fights that people want to see. They've earned their credibility by taking tough matchups so I doubt that their reluctance comes from being scared to lose. I haven't seen anything like that from Tank, who has fought lower-level opposition his entire career, so I'll believe that he's serious about fighting them when the fights actually get made.

In Haney's case, he took the risk of leaving Matchroom to sign a one-sided deal from Top Rank and DiBella to fight for undisputed. Regardless of what you think of Kambosos, Haney was willing to bet on himself to beat the champion twice in his hometown (always risky given potential for biased judges and officiating). He then fought an older version of Loma, a tougher challenge than anything Tank has taken on.

In Teofimo's case, he had enormous balls for going straight for Commey (a decent champ at the time) and Loma (who was consensus P4P top 3) after a tough outing against Nakatani where he struggled significantly. Most people thought the Loma fight was too early for him but he bet on himself against a top-tier boxer. After losing to Kambosos and looking flat in his first two fights at 140, he took another huge risk in fighting Josh Taylor (again, a fight that was viewed as a huge challenge at the time even with the Catterall performance). Most people picked against Teo leading up to that fight and he put on a fantastic performance to prove fans wrong. Tank has never taken anything remotely close to the risks that Teo has taken in his career.

The callouts (especially by promoters) don't mean much when a fighter does not have a track record of seriously entertaining tough fights and taking risks with his career. Not being biased against Floyd or Leonard Ellerbe, you could say the same about Hearn (who has done a great job of painting AJ as being blameless when it comes to the Fury and Wilder fights never materializing). Sure, PBC does a great job of making their fighters money, but at the end of the day what they do to build up their stars is bad for fans of the sport. Definitely agree that Golden Boy treated Ryan Garcia disgracefully but they're a bottom-of-the-barrel company, so most of the big promotions/companies look phenomenal compared to them anyway.

 

I'd say his opposition has been slightly better than Wilder's but that would be splitting hairs. I'll give him all the credit in the world if he beats Shakur and/or Teofimo during their primes but doubt either of those fights are happening anytime soon.

 

We know what would happen: they would make lots of money to take a fight at a catchweight with a rehydration clause. They'd be at a significant disadvantage and take serious damage if they get caught by Tank while being dehydrated. We've seen it happen already to the social media star (who had <1% chance of winning without those clauses anyway, but Tank and his management still wanted more advantages).

Leaving that aside, Prograis is still a champion at 140. Haney's happy to go up and fight a champion at 140, so why doesn't Tank (the supposed 3 weight champion) go up to 140 to fight Matias? The guy has fought on Showtime multiple times so politics shouldn't be an issue. Again, I doubt that fight happens anytime soon unless Matias shows serious vulnerabilities again (like he did in his loss). Much more likely to get safe matchups like Chris Colbert and keep the hype train running. It's frustrating to see because he's obviously a talented boxer, but he's happy to spend his career avoiding challenges while collecting big checks for fighting subpar opposition. This is coming from someone who believes that Tank knocks out Haney at this point of their careers even if they fight at 140 without any catchweights/rehydration clauses.