One of the primary marketing elements promoters love to exploit is missing from the Gervonta Davis-Ryan Garcia fight Saturday in Las Vegas: Not a single title is at stake.
And guess what? That hasn’t detracted one iota from the compelling nature of the matchup, which will take place at a catch weight of 136 pounds.
Fans aren’t dumb. They know that the shiny belts aren’t worth much more than the materials used to make them because there are simply too many of them.
There are 68 champions if you accept the IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO as the major organizations and allow them one champion in each of the 17 divisions, 69 if you count the WBC’s new bridgerweight weight class. That number gets bigger if you count secondary titles, which many are willing to do.
The glut of titles is absurd to say the least.
That’s why Garcia couldn’t care less that he hasn’t held a major world in his seven-year career. His focus is on collecting big, meaningful fights, not trinkets.
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“It’s just, to me, the belts are diluted,” Garcia said in a DAZN interview last summer, long before the deal to fight Davis was struck. “… Me winning championships is gonna just give people more ammo to be like, ‘Oh, Ryan’s this.’
“I don’t care about that. I need to know in my heart I beat the guy that I feel is the champion. If I beat Tank Davis, or when I beat Tank Davis, I will feel like a champion regardless if he has a real belt or not.
“I will feel like a champion because the name carries weight, his name carries weight.”
Oscar De La Hoya, Garcia’s promoter and a former six-division beltholder himself, told Boxing Junkie that titles are important to most young fighters because they serve as a springboard to bigger 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’ve achieved star status with one spectacular victory after another – including a combined 45 knockouts in 51 fights – and millions of followers on social media.
Who needs titles?
“This is a perfect indicator that titles don’t matter at this level,” De La Hoya told Boxing Junkie. “When you have fighters who are so popular, nobody is talking about what titles they have or don’t have. Nobody is talking about that. It’s all about the fighters, it’s all about who’s going to win, it’s all about who’s going to be the face of boxing once he gets his hand raised.
“Titles do matter when you’re coming up, when you don’t have too much popularity like these fighters do. The world title does matter. People pay attention to that, it’s very, very important. But at this level you’re talking about a whole different animal.”
De La Hoya mentioned the ultimate title: The face of boxing, which could be attainable for Davis or Garcia.
“The Golden Boy” had that distinguished moniker in the 1990s and into the 2000s. And he believes the winner on Saturday will succeed Canelo Alvarez as the most significant figure in the sport because of an unparalled combination of ability and popularity.
“I feel these last fights that Canelo will be having in his career he has an opportunity to really cement his legacy as one of the very, very best. … But guess what? Right around the corner is Gervonta Davis and Ryan Garcia, which is the next generation.
“… So I strongly feel that the winner of the this fight will be the face of boxing.”