This weekend Gervonta Davis stakes his WBA (Regular) lightweight title, and perfect 25-0 record, against the 22-1-1 Isaac Cruz. In the lead-up to that fight ‘Tank’ has been doing the media rounds and during one stop he spoke about the possibility of switching gloves to the finger-less kind.
On the Full Send podcast Davis said he’d fight in the UFC if the money was right. He also suggested he’d do pretty good in the cage.
“I mean, if they pay me — I know they probably wouldn’t pay me like a boxer’s (purse) — like a boxing match, but if they paid me enough to where I’m comfortable with it, I’d fight and MMA fight,” he said (ht Lowkick MMA).
Davis then demonstrated he has little knowledge of MMA asking the hosts if he could get kicked in the face in the UFC. “No, I’d still do it,” he said, after learning this was possible. “’Cause, you gotta think about it, I slip punches — so if somebody can kick me from all the way down there, I deserve to get kicked.“
“I gotta fight somebody like in my weight class,” Davis continued. “I don’t think somebody could get me, like somebody at my weight, can get me down and pin me, I don’t see that. ‘Cause, like — I’m from the hood, we used to wrestle. That’s what we do. First thing we do, we swing, and then from the swing, we picking you up and slamming you. Like, let’s just say, I’m fighting right now, on the street, I’m not gonna just straight box you, I’m gonna swing and then pick you up — you going in the air.“
Stranger things have happened, but it seems unlikely that UFC President Dana White would open the purse strings wide enough to afford a talent like Davis. For this weekend’s fight against Cruz, Davis is reportedly earning a $1 million guaranteed purse with a 60% pay-per-view share (estimated to be worth $2.3 million).
It’s estimated that Kamaru Usman, the UFC’s welterweight champion and top men’s pound-for-pound fighter, earned a total of $1,767,000 (including pay-per-view bonus) at UFC 268.
Davis wouldn’t be the first boxer to dip his toes into the Octagon. James Toney famously took the plunge in 2010—and was submitted by Randy Couture in three minutes. Plenty of UFC fighters have gone the other way, with mixed success.
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