Fernando Vargas says, “Nobody knows who Keyshawn Davis is,” and he needs to get his name out there where fans know him before he’ll consider letting him fight one of his three sons.
Former two-time junior middleweight champion Vargas says that lightweight contender Keyshawn (12-0, 8 KOs) won’t be recognized if he walks into a restaurant or a stadium. Fernando says fans will know who his 24-year-old son, Amado Vargas, but NOT Keyshawn.
Nobody knows Keyshawn
Top Rank is going to have to do something drastic with Keyshawn to turn him into a star because the way he’s been performing and the poor matchups have left him no better off than he was when he first turned pro in 2021 not.
Keyshawn looks like a wash outa fighter who failed to achieve what his promoters expected after winning a silver medal in the 2020 Olympics.
They should throw Keyshaw in with one of the sharks like Andy Cruz, and if he loses, drop him like a bad habit. I know it will hurt Top Rank to admit they struggled by signing him over the guy who beat him in the Olympics, Andy Cruz, but nobody is perfect.
“The thing is this. Nobody knows who Keyshawn Davis is. So, he must get his name” said Fernando Vargas Battle hype when asked about Keyshawn Davis fighting Amado Vargas.
What Fernando doesn’t say is HOW Top Rank can get Keyshawn’s “name up”. I know the answer, but I don’t think they want to take the risk with Keyshawn and watch him lose repeatedly. They stick with the Edgar Berlanga-style matches, feed him cans of tomatoes, hoping that the casuals will be impressed enough to become fans.
Fernando is right. No one outside of the ultra-hard boxing fans knows who Keyshawn is, and they get excited when he fights. There has never been any fan buzz when Keyshawn fights because his fighting style is not entertaining.
Keyshawn’s last four opponents:
– Gustavo Lemos
– Miguel Madueno
– Jose Pedraza: 35
– Nahir Albright
“He and Keyshawn walk into a restaurant. Who will know them? Are they going to know Amado or Keyshawn? That’s all I have to say. I’m not saying we won’t fight him because we want to.
It must be millions
“We are down, but they have to make M’s (millions). Not hundreds of thousands of dollars. M’s,” Fernando said of the Davis brothers having to bring in millions per fight for him to be interested in letting Keyshawn or any of them fight his sons.
It doesn’t look promising as far as Keyshawn becoming a fighter who brings in millions for his fights. He’s not another Gervonta Davis, and he doesn’t have the entertaining style of guys like William Zepeda or Abdullah Mason. If anything, Keyshawn fights more like Shakur Stevenson, but he mixes in roughhouse tactics. Think of Keyshawn as a physical version of Shakur.
The problem 2020 Olympic silver medalist Keyshawn has is that he’s been fighting poor opposition his entire three-year pro career, and he hasn’t been pushed to fight talented guys like Andy Cruz, William Zepeda or Raymond Muratalla.
All the soft matches Top Rank did for Shakur to take the backdoor route to build him into a star didn’t work. Fans are not impressed because they are not fools. They can see with their own eyes that Top Rank is feeding Keyshawn tight.
If Top Rank changed things up by matching Keyshawn against Cruz, Zepeda, Muratalla or Abdullah Mason, he might gain a following if he wins. They don’t do that.
Even now, Keyshawn has been maneuvered into a title shot against WBO champion Denys Berinchyk, the weakest of the lightweight belt holders.
Hype It Up
“You have to lift it up, and you have to become more famous. I am not saying anything that is wrong. No one knows who those guys are unless you’re a box-head. Nobody knows who they are yet,” Fernando said of Keyshawn’s brothers. “If Amado walks into a place with Keyshawn, I don’t even know who he is.”
Keyshawn has two brothers who box, Kelvin Davis and Keon Davis, but not much talent is shown. Dubbing himself and his brothers “DB3,” Davis repeats that moniker a lot, hoping it will stick in the minds of fans. It didn’t.
Welterweight prospect Kelvin is mediocre, and Keon looks just as below average. If Keyshawn is hoping that Fernando will set up fights involving his sons with the Davis brothers, he’s kidding himself because it’s never going to happen. No one would care if Fernando did make those fights, and of course he knows it.
“If he and Amado walk into the arena, the majority of people know who Amado is. They’re not going to know who the hell Keyshawn is,” Vargas said.