Internally, they’re calling it “The Nightmare in Norfolk.”
Keyshawn Davis’ disintegration from lightweight champion to bullying brother this past weekend is the talk of boxing, as the hometown fighter from Virginina blew weight by more than four pounds, failed to negotiate a settlement to preserve his purse and then had an altercation with boxer Nahir Albright after Albright defeated Davis’ brother, Kelvin Davis, at Scope Arena in his Norfolk hometown.
“A lot of what we saw in this is a lack of professionality, emotional spiraling,” former 140lbs titleholder Chris Algieri said on Wednesday’s edition of ProBoxTV’s “BoxingScene Today.”
“Keyshawn Davis’ team took a lot of Ls.”
ProBoxTV analyst Algieri said Davis, 13-0 (9 KOs), was initially negligent in the first defense of his newly won WBO 135lbs belt by failing to inform his promoter and opponent Edwin De Los Santos’ side that he was struggling to hit the targeted weight.
“You missed it by a mile … [indicating] you don’t care. Lack of communication is a lack of respect – for the promotion, for [your] hometown,” Algieri said. “The [psychological] weight of that belt was real.”
Former welterweight titlist and ProBoxTV analyst Paulie Malignaggi summarized the heavily favored Davis’ downfall as, “A can’t-miss moment that he missed.”
Davis, trained by recent Trainer of the Year and Terence Crawford cornerman Brian “Bomac” McIntyre, displayed a “complete lack of respect for the title” by stating the obvious at his failed weigh-in that his body has outgrown the division.
Both former belt holders said the entire weekend “just completely imploded,” to damage the reputation of Davis, the 2021 U.S. Olympic silver medalist whose prospects in a division that counts unbeaten three-division champions Shakur Stevenson and Gervonta “Tank” Davis as occupants, were seen as so promising before all this went south.
Even by provoking news conference trash-talk with Cleveland’s Abdullah Mason, 21, who replaced Davis in the main event and will now fight for his vacant belt, Davis displayed a remarkable absence of foresight, knowing the lightning storm of controversy his missed-weight episode was going to trigger.
“Abdullah looked great in that main event, handled it all with poise and class and now is in position to fight for the title,” Algieri said.
As Davis defects to 140lbs, he leaves a reshaped but still impressive division that includes new IBF titleholder Raymond Muratalla (who replaced the retired former three-division champion Vasiliy Lomachenko) and talented contenders Andy Cruz, Lamont Roach Jnr and William Zepeda.
“Keyshawn Davis broke under pressure. It all came to a head [afterward and led to this] emotional outburst,” Algieri said. “It got aggressive, violent, illegal.”
Host Jimmy Smith said it reminded him of a former Bellator MMA scene, when a co-main-event fighter engaged in a hotel hallroom screaming match with his trainer the night before the fight, prompting the trainer to reply, “You’re just not ready for this level. You’re looking for a way out.”
Surmised Smith: “If you don’t want to be here in fighting, folks, you’ll find a way out.”
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.