My Boxing Pound-For-Pound List After Gervonta Davis Dominated Ryan Garcia

If there was a criticism of Gervonta “Tank” Davis before he blasted out Ryan Garcia on Saturday night—and if there was anything that kept him off my boxing pound-for-pound list—it was that his resume was anything but spectacular. He had beaten quite a few A-minus or B-plus level opponents (and even some former world titlists), but he had never faced anybody elite.

It remains to be seen whether Garcia eventually will reach that level, but on Saturday, he presented himself as the best opponent of Davis’ career. And Davis responded beautifully.

Which begs the question: has Davis FINALLY shown enough to be included on a top-10 pound-for-pound list? My answer FINALLY is yes.

Davis was that good against Garcia, knocking him down in the second round with a counter left and finishing him off in the seventh with a scorching body shot that caused a delayed reaction that then forced Davis to take a knee for slightly more than 10 seconds.

Though Davis had already knocked out solid fighters like Leo Santa Cruz, Jose Pedraza, Isaac Cruz and Hector Luis Garcia, this was the defining moment of Davis’ career and compelled me to insert him into my P4P list at No. 6. Here’s how my current list stands.

1. Terence Crawford
2. Errol Spence
3. Naoya Inoue
4. Canelo Alvarez
5. Oleksandr Usyk
6. Gervonta Davis
7. Vasiliy Lomachenko
8. Tyson Fury
9. Shakur Stevenson
10. Dmitry Bivol

For what it’s worth, here’s how The Ring’s top-10 list looks, and here’s how ESPN sees it. As of this writing, neither site has updated their lists after the Davis-Garcia fight, but before Saturday night, neither had Davis in the top-10.

My biggest change after Saturday night was to insert Davis above Vasiliy Lomachenko (though I would almost certainly move Lomachenko back up the list if he beats Devin Haney on May 20) and to move Jermell Charlo off the list completely because it’s nearly been a year since he last fought and because there’s no date for his next bout as he deals with an injury.

For now, Crawford and Spence are still in the top two spots, and if they eventually fight each other (the boxing world crosses its fingers), the winner would remain at No. 1. If Canelo Alvarez were to eventually beat Dmitry Bivol in a rematch, you’d have to consider moving him to the top of list, and if Naoya Inoue beats Stephen Fulton in spectacular fashion, he also could make a clam for No. 1.

Meanwhile, what could Davis do to continue making his way up the list? Although he doesn’t have a lightweight title, Davis is certainly one of the best at 135 pounds. Haney has all the lightweight belts, but there’s plenty of speculation that he’ll move up to 140 after the Lomachenko fight and abandon all those titles (assuming Lomachenko doesn’t take them from him).

That could leave Davis an opening to fight for some of that hardware. Fights against Lomachenko and George Kambosos would draw plenty of interest, but the marquee matchup at lightweight would eventually be Davis vs. Shakur Stevenson. The winner of that bout would almost surely move into the top-5 and could make an argument for being No. 1 overall.

After Saturday’s fight, Davis said he was the new face of boxing. His pound-for-pound ranking doesn’t explicitly show that yet, but he’s certainly drawing closer.