The fight he gets this weekend is the one Yuriorkis Gamboa wanted all along, but was more than happy to earn his way into that position.
The 2004 Olympic Gold medalist and former featherweight titlist was angling for a shot at unbeaten two-time 130-pound titlist Gervonta Davis (22-0, 21KOs), with such a bout very much on the table until mandatory title defense obligations got in the way. Davis and his team parlayed a sanctioning body-ordered fight with Ricardo Nuñez into a homecoming showcase, bringing championship boxing back to his Baltimore hometown.
With that July event came the opportunity to showcase his next opponent, providing Gamboa a chance to shine which he did in a two-round wipeout of former 130-pound titlist Roman ‘Rocky Martinez as did Davis of Nuñez in the main event. Both bouts aired live on Showtime, with the winners colliding head on in a vacant lightweight title fight this Saturday at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia.
“I knew that if I did my part by beating Martinez in July that the next step would logically be Gervonta,” Gamboa noted during a recent media conference call of the motivation that went into his previous performance. “So, that's why I was so sure of it.
“It's a fight that was promised to me when I came into an agreement with PBC and it's something that's within the contract that if I was able to beat Martinez, Gervonta was on the horizon.”
Still, there came the matter of actually beating the opponent in front of him, which no longer carries the same guarantee for Gamboa than was the case in the prime of his career. The Miami-based Cuban export recently celebrated his 38th birthday and hasn’t emerged victorious in even an interim title fight since a June 2013 points win over then-unbeaten Darleys Perez, suffering stoppages losses to Terence Crawford and Robinson Castellanos over the course of his next five starts.
A four-fight win streak precedes his first title fight since the aforementioned loss to Crawford, one which follows his first knockout win since 2014. Puerto Rico’s Martinez had only suffered losses at the title level—losing to Ricky Burns, Mikey Garcia and Vasilily Lomachenko—prior to this past July, which Gamboa used as additional motivation beyond preserving his sought after showdown with Davis.
“I think the work that was done and put into the camp against Roman Martinez and the results or the outcome of that bout clearly reflected the amount of work that I put into training camp,” insists Gamboa. “I have since built on that momentum and went above and beyond my last training camp in order to get to the level I need to, in order to emerge victorious on December 28.”
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox