Lamont Roach Jr. says WBA lightweight champion Gervonta Davis will be making a huge mistake if he lets himself jump out to an early lead on March 1.
Roach’s keys to victory
The technically proficient super featherweight champion Roach Jr. (25-1-1, 10 KOs) says that Tank (30-0, 28 KOs) will be in a difficult position if he takes the early rounds to have to rush him to play. catching up to score a knockout, and he wasn’t going to let that happen.
One thing people should note is the fact that Tank has been outboxed by many of his recent lackluster opponents. These aren’t talented fighters that Tank has fought, but they banked rounds against him and put him in a hole where he had to score knockouts to win.
Unlike Gervonta’s last five opponents, Roach will not try to knock him out. So it will be much more difficult for Davis to connect with one of his bailout knockouts that he has been accustomed to to turn his fights around.
If Tank is going to win, he’ll have to go on the hunt and use his skills, because it’s not going to be easy to catch Roach in a moment of recklessness.
Davis vs. Roach will headline a 12-round fight on PBC Prime Video PPV on March 1 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The fight was previously scheduled for December 14 at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas, but due to venue issues, Davis-Roach had to be moved to March 1.
“He is accurate. He does hit people on the button. That’s one thing he does. I’ve noticed that he has pinpoint accuracy when it comes to hitting people right there in their soft spot,” said Lamont Roach. Lukas Thomastalk about what makes Gervonta Davis so good.
“Make him uncomfortable,” Roach said of what he plans to do against Tank Davis. “He proved to be durable in the Pitbull fight because he had one hand, and he still defended, didn’t get hit a lot, but he was uncomfortable because Pitbull threw some heat at him. He showed good defense in that fight.
“Pitbull is a solid volume puncher that he has fought. He did exceptional,” Roach said of how Gervonta fared against a fighter with a high work rate, Isaac Cruz. “In the last four rounds he had one hand. If there is a durable volume puncher in front of him, I think he will look the same as he did against Pitbull unless someone catches him.
Tank, 30, is accurate with his counter punches when he faces guys who throw wild punches and don’t think about what comes back. We saw it in his fights with these guys:
– Frank Martin
– Ryan Garcia
– Hector Garcia
– Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero
– Mario Barrios
– Leo Santa Cruz
Tank would have knocked out Isaac ‘Pitbull’ Cruz as well, but he was fighting with only one hand after suffering an injury early on. The commonality of David’s last six knockouts is that his opponents were all wild and not technically sound. Roach isn’t going to leave openings like those one-dimensional fighters did.
Early rounds are crucial
“If he wants to give away early rounds against me, that’s stupid. I’m going to take them,” says Roach. “The next thing he looks up is probably going to be a drastic change in his game plan. It’s obviously going to be something he has to make up for. Now, it’s either going to be a chase or a knockout. I’m not going to let that happen.
“My best advice to him is you better not give me an early round. It’s going to be a long night for you, mate,” Roach says of his advice to Tank.
