When Jake Paul and Gervonta Davis met for the first time at a press conference to announce their November 14 “exhibition” on Netflix, it was clear that one of the two was more into exhibitionism than the other.
The exhibitionist was Jake Paul, of course.
He, in fact, was the one who proposed the date in the first place – time, location, etc. – and saw in Davis, before meeting him, everything he looks for in a potential mate.
Paul likes bad boys, you see, and Davis, who goes by the nickname “Tank”, was certainly one of them. He had a rap sheet longer than his title reign and he showed no signs of redeeming himself anytime soon, either. There were accusations, court dates, lawsuits, even some house arrest. He had, it seemed, never fully grown up or escaped the clutches of his upbringing and his past. He saw opponents not just in the ring but everywhere he went. Some were men; others were women.
With Paul, perhaps things would be different.
That was clearly Paul’s hope. He hoped that by connecting with Davis and striking up a relationship, they would for a time be happy together. There would be an exhibition bout between them, let’s call it soft play, and then at its conclusion they would embrace and go home wealthier than they were when touching 12-ounce gloves and teasing each other for 10 rounds.
There was always a danger, however, that Davis, given his reputation, might act up, go rogue. He might, for instance, do something impulsive on the night – an illegal punch, say, or a kick, or a bite – or he might not bother to show up at all.
Then again, any concerns on that front were assuaged by the fact that Gervonta Davis is a professional boxer and within the confines of his profession he usually behaves. His reputation, in the ring at least, is almost spotless. It was for that reason Paul swiped right and decided to take the risk.
Besides, the other good thing about Gervonta Davis is that he is small and Paul likes them small. When they are small, they are easier to control, easier to hurt, and less likely to give it back. When they are small, Paul tends to feel bigger than normal, stronger than normal, and can mitigate any disparity in skill or experience. He only hoped that when he and Davis met for the first time he would not be shocked by Davis’ height or find out that he had lied about it, as some are apt to do in a dating profile. He wanted Davis to be honest and to see, when standing next to him, a man no taller than 5 '5. He also wanted to make it clear to Davis that when they boxed, on November 14, the stipulated weight would be 195 pounds. That way Paul, a 200-pound cruiserweight, wouldn’t have to deplete himself too much to make weight and that way Davis, a natural lightweight, would be left working out the difference between 135 pounds, his normal fighting weight, and 195 pounds, the weight at which Paul would “fight” him on November 14.
Davis, when reminded of this number, seemed surprised, perhaps disappointed. He maintained that the agreed upon weight should have been 190 pounds, not 195, and felt that Paul had lied on his profile and fed him a line he discovered, when meeting, was neither true nor fair. Already, it seemed, there was a trust issue developing between the pair. Already there was a rift in what both believed would be a harmonious union.
This feeling of disharmony then grew when Paul listened to Davis’ attempt at conversation across the table and soon realised there was a reason why Davis, for all his brilliance in the ring, is still a relative unknown in America. Words fell from the champion’s mouth, but they were often dribbled or mumbled, and nothing Davis said made a lot of sense, nor provoked Paul to respond, get excited. Instead, Paul quickly came to terms with the fact that Davis might be a great fighter, but he is no great communicator and certainly no salesman. Paul wondered at that stage whether he had overestimated Davis’ capacity in this department. Had he even thought about it going in? Had he stressed to Davis how selling this odd-couple relationship was just as important as Davis being both a bad boy and a short king?
Apparently not. Davis, for his part, wasn’t getting any of it. He didn’t get the need to sell, he didn’t get the need to play David and Goliath, and he didn’t get with the programme as far as Jake Paul was concerned. That’s why halfway through their first press conference Paul decided to shame him. He did so by bringing up Davis’ criminal past and by then describing him as “boring”, the implication being that he was fed up with making all the conversation and the moves. Though it was only their first date, Paul wanted to detect greater interest from his suitor and he wanted to know that he was into him and prepared to make their arrangement work.
But alas, that never happened. Rather than show any desire to get along, or play his part, Davis went the other way. He moped. He sulked. He exhibited nothing. Even when he got close to Paul during their faceoff, he just looked away, he slumped his shoulders, and he evoked the image of a boy who had been dragged to a museum by his parents against his will.
You wondered then how long it would last – the pretense of a good time, the gimmick of the fight, the relationship. One man wanted to make a go of it, that much was obvious, but the other seemed only to want to get paid and go home, with not even the slightest suggestion that they were willing to pretend or roleplay for the benefit of their date and the audience.
Given this dynamic, and the conflict in attitudes between them, it was hard to see how it could possibly work. Davis, the reluctant one, refused to go public about the relationship, seldom commenting on it, while Paul became increasingly agitated by Davis’ reluctance to participate, especially when ticket sales for the exhibition indicated the fans were as indifferent towards it as Davis.
Ultimately, it came as no surprise when Paul said enough is enough and accepted the relationship was untenable. Doomed from the very start, it ended the way lots of relationships do, healthy, toxic or otherwise. It ended with Paul hearing rumours of bad behaviour, then scrolling through his partner’s phone to find proof of what they had long suspected but tried to ignore.
In this case, the declaration that it was over came off the back of Davis being sued by a woman who had accused him of domestic violence. That was just the latest in a series of allegations against Davis, of course, and it was enough on this occasion to have Paul wash his hands with a man who had once been just the right size and just the right amount of controversial.
“Gervonta Davis is an actual walking human piece of garbage,” Paul wrote on social media on Monday. “Working with him is an absolute nightmare. The unprofessionalism, the bizarre requests, the showing up hours late to shoots, to the numerous arrests and related accusations and lawsuits. If you support this man, you support the most vile sin a man can commit.
“I didn’t want to give this woman abuser a platform to grow his fans and to grow his bank account. My company champions women. I’m so sorry to everyone involved. Mostly to the undercard fighters, to my team at MVP and to my team who worked so hard prepping for this fight. Sacrificing time with loved ones and kids just for this fool to lose his unintelligent mind again. It’s scary that devilish men like this can rise to the top of culture and sports, including in positions of power.”
While nothing Paul said in that statement is untrue, still it highlights either naivety on his part or an attempt to save face. After all, Gervonta Davis didn’t just become a “human piece of garbage” last week. He has, in fact, been playing that role for some time and is by all accounts a lot more comfortable in and suited to that role than he is playing Cheech to Jake Paul’s Chong in a Netflix exhibition. In other words, to play a “human piece of garbage” comes naturally to Gervonta Davis and, thanks to boxing, he has both the freedom and platform to perform in spite of his so-called “devilish” behaviour. Indeed, if he had been a reliable “human piece of garbage” rather than an unreliable one, he likely would have been free to play both roles with aplomb next Friday: human piece of garbage and Jake Paul’s next opponent.
Davis would, in that respect, have merely continued the trend of recent Jake Paul opponents, all of whom were granted the same platform and opportunity. Right or wrong, he would have happily taken the baton from the likes of Julio Cesar Chavez Jnr and Mike Tyson and he would have allowed Paul to use his notoriety as a selling point – that is, a positive thing – instead of the stick with which to beat him in public.
Yet crucially, unlike Chavez Jnr and Tyson, Davis was less inclined to acquiesce and bend the knee. He is also a “walking piece of garbage”, as Paul states, and therefore active and moving and still getting up to no good. He is not, as is true of Tyson and Chavez Jnr, someone for whom time has been both a healer and concealer and someone whose crimes can be repackaged or even forgotten for the sake of a fight promotion. Instead, Davis is in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons right now and that means that all the reasons for picking him as an opponent in the first place – bad boy, little boy – will no longer wash in the court of public opinion. Whereas last week he was simply a world champion at lightweight, now Davis is a “human piece of garbage” and that’s all there is to it. It doesn’t matter, to Paul, whether those two things have been accurate for the entirety of this promotion, which they have, nor does it matter to him that one of the reasons for targeting Davis from the jump is the same reason for now ending their relationship and telling the world why. All that matters is that he has had enough and can no longer make this thing – relationship, promotion, façade – work.
Maybe it’s true what they say when they say that many relationships end for the exact same reason they started.
Maybe, with these two, Gervonta Davis was everything Jake Paul was looking for until he became too much of what Jake Paul was looking for. Maybe it was then that Jake Paul learned that there are different kinds of bad boys out there and that only some are deemed suitable if you are trying to “champion” women’s boxing and sell something to Netflix.
Or maybe Jake Paul just hated the fact that in his search for bad boys he had managed to find himself the worst kind of bad boy: the one who doesn’t even pretend to be anything else.
Elliot Worsell is a boxing writer whose byline first appeared in Boxing News magazine at the age of 17. He has, in the 20 years since, written for various publications, worked as press officer for two world heavyweight champions and won four first-place BWAA (Boxing Writers Association of America) awards. In addition to his boxing writing, Worsell has written about mixed martial arts for Fighters Only magazine and UFC.com, as well as worked as a publicist for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). He has also written two non-fiction books, one of which, “Dog Rounds,” was shortlisted at the British Sports Book Awards in 2018.
