BROOKLYN, N.Y – They were sizing each other up, jawing at each other for what seemed like two straight minutes, but by the time trainer Calvin Ford managed to pull his charge away from the verbal fracas, Gervonta Davis had seen all that he needed from his boisterous nemesis Rolando Romero.
“He’s soft,” Davis, the hard-hitting southpaw from Baltimore, told a group of reporters about what he gleaned from his opponent in that exchange. “That’s what he is. He’s soft.”
In a mostly well-behaved yet at times tense press conference at the Barclays Center to announce their May 28 lightweight bout on Showtime Pay-Per-View, Davis and Romero picked up the vitriol where they had last left it, in October, when they initially met to promote what was supposed to be a showdown in December. But after Romero became the subject of a sexual assault allegation, he was yanked from the main event, forcing Davis instead to go up against the game Isaac Cruz, whom he wound beating by unanimous decision.
Yet upon the conclusion of a police investigation the Las Vegas-based Romero, a noted, if relatively inexperienced, puncher himself, was not charged with a crime. That motion paved the way for “Rolly” to get a second chance to go up against a fighter that many observers regard as one of just a handful (if that) of legitimate boxing draws in the United States.
Neither man likes the other very much, and they reminded each other of their animosity Thursday afternoon on the dais as they heeded questions from host Brian Custer.
“You see his nose, right?” Davis, 27, said. “[If] I hit him with one of these I’m gonna knock his whole nose off. Look at his nose. His nose is, like, real small.”
“May 28 you’re getting knocked out,” Romero, 26, retorted. “We’re ending your little reign. You can go retire. And that’s that.”
Davis-Romero marks the return of major boxing at the Barclays Center and by extension, in the borough of Brooklyn, since the beginning of the pandemic. Kings County is new territory for Romero, whose father was a well-regarded boxer from Cuba, but it is a familiar one for the well-traveled Davis, who picked up one of early signature wins of his career here, a seventh-round technical knockout of Jose Pedraza, in 2017, to win the IBF junior lightweight title. At the time, Davis was still an undercard fighter perhaps better known to the larger public for his association with his promoter Floyd Mayweather and friend Adrien Broner. He was also battling through some bumpy chapters in his life.
Five pounds and five years later, “Tank”, now a father to a baby daughter, will headline Barclays for the first time. He seems to have found some measure of peace in his personal life since his title-winning effort at the venue – his recent tweets concerning his promoter, however, suggest that there might be some trouble afoot; Davis refused to answer queries on that issue – and has come into his own, touting a public persona seemingly untethered from the Money May brand. He has emerged, moreover, as a bonafide boxing attraction, no small feat given how the sport has lately struggled to maintain its hold on the mainstream.
“We know what we came here to do,” Davis said as though he were a grizzled veteran. “This is not the first time we’ve been here.”
One thing is for sure, Romero has never been here.
In their press conference last October in Los Angeles, the brash and gaudy Romero very well may have stolen the show. He showed up, in the noonday heat, wearing an oversized fur coat straight out of The Mack, opened up to reveal no shirt, only abs. In Brooklyn, where it was wet and dreary all day, Romero (14-0, 12 KOs) was decked out in a similar sartorial concept, wearing a colorful, almost psychedelic Dolce and Gabbana suit that was, once again, unbuttoned to showcase his bare torso.
A bejewelled Davis (26-0, 24 KOs) kept it relatively simpler – and more responsibly swathed – wearing a varsity jacket over a Supreme t-shirt.
But if Romero seemed slightly subdued this time around, Davis was anything but. As the two Mayweather Promotions stablemates moseyed up to each other on the center of the stage to partake in boxing’s oldest ritual, the typically tight-lipped Davis began assuming the air of a rottweiler, making threatening gesticulations and mouthing off slurs like “p-ssy” and “bum” seemingly every other second. Ford, Davis’ head trainer and life coach, could only smile as he looked on.
Was Romero taken aback? Davis certainly thought so. This wasn’t an Internet forum, after all, where the bar for flinging f-bombs at anonymous avatars is much lower than In Real Life.
“It’s different when they talking on Instagram or anything [like that],” Davis said. “They talk. Face to face is different. Way different, way different.”
Davis, the clear-cut A-side who has made his mark across America by headlining in cities as diverse as Atlanta, Los Angeles, and San Antonio, felt he needed to remind his challenger where he stood in the boxing food chain.
“He a b!tch,” Davis said. “That’s what it’s all about. Showing people that think they’re tough [that] there’s always somebody out there badder than you.”
Asked if his emotions might have gotten the best of him, Davis grinned and shook his head.
“I’m really not pissed off at all,” he said. “I just had to do that to show him that [I’m in charge]. You know what I mean?”