It didn’t take long for Most Valuable Promotions to find a new home for its exhibition bout between company founder Jake Paul and Gervonta “Tank” Davis.
On the same day that it was reported the company had withdrawn its application to stage the exhibition in Georgia, MVP announced that the show will now take place at the Kaseya Center in Miami. The show will remain on its original date, November 14, with Netflix to broadcast the bout.
It’s no small coincidence that Davis-Paul lands in Miami, which is the city where Paul’s brother Logan boxed an exhibition against Floyd Mayweather Jnr in 2021, despite weighing nearly 35lbs heavier than the retired boxing great. Jake Paul, whose pro record is 12-1 (7 KOs), weighed in at 199.5lbs for his most recent fight in June, a unanimous decision against Julio Cesar Chavez Jnr, while Davis, 30-0-1 (28 KOs), is the current WBA lightweight titleholder and weighed 133.75lbs for his last fight in March, a draw against Lamont Roach Jnr. The difference in their most recent weights was a quarter pound shy of 66lbs.
Representatives of the Georgia Athletic and Entertainment Commission, which oversees professional boxing in the state, had revealed on Friday that the fight was unlikely to take place there, with Robert A. Sinners, Communications Director for the Office of Secretary of State, telling USA Today flatly that the event “will not be happening.”
MVP announced that it will stop at the Palladium Theatre in New York City on September 22 for a press conference to promote the event, followed by another one the following day at the Kaseya Center. Both press conferences will take place at 6 p.m. ET and are open and free to the public.
The Kaseya Center, which opened in 1999, can seat a capacity crowd of 19,500 and is home to the National Basketball Association’s Miami Heat. The venue’s highest profile boxing event was in 2005, when Mayweather defeated Henry Bruseles in eight rounds on a card televised by HBO, but its greatest contribution to boxing history came in 2015, when Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao met face-to-face while attending a Heat game to discuss the possibility of their long overdue fight, which took place later that year.
