Boxing Challenge: Davis Defeats Cruz

    Sunday night, Gervonta Davis retained his minor title with a tougher than expected unanimous decision triumph over Isaac Cruz in Los Angeles.

Davis was unable to extend his knockout string, which saw Davis stop his previous sixteen opponents dating back to German Maraz surviving the eight-round distance in October 2014.

Cruz was aggressive throughout the fight but in my opinion, didn't throw enough punches in the first eight rounds and fell behind on the cards.

Davis appeared to have injured his left hand and rarely threw it over the final few rounds, leading to Cruz getting back into the fight by winning the last three rounds on my card.

Still, I agreed with two of the judges scoring for Davis at 115-113 (the third had Davis up 116-112) and the lead was too much for Cruz to overcome.

Davis looked a little vulnerable against Cruz and his concern about preferring taller fighters than himself before the fight proved to be a legitimate worry as Cruz was very effective in keeping Davis from cracking him to the body.

The fight still could be a good thing for Davis in showing him that not every fighter is going to fall down every time they are punched and if Cruz's performance was helped by a lack of preparation by Davis (not saying that is the case), perhaps that can be corrected in the future.

After the fight, Davis gave up his minor WBA title at junior welterweight, choosing to keep his minor WBA title at lightweight.

Sooner or later, I would imagine the WBA will make Davis fight their real champion in George Kambosos as the organization tries to clean up their mess of titles but until then look for Davis to keep knocking over fighters similar to Cruz (top ten/twelve level) or even lesser.

Lightweight may be the most talented division in boxing with terrific fighters that unfortunately are scattered almost several promotional companies and with the exception of Kambosos, a promotional free agent, appear content to lob Twitter grenades rather than get into the ring and fight each other.

I would be surprised to see any of these stars except for maybe Kambosos and Devin Haney actually face each other in 2022. 

I have not seen the other two fights with the results:

Sebastian Fundora unanimous decision over Sergio Garcia.

Carlos Adames majority decision over Sergey Dereyvanchenko.

In the boxing challenge, I scored three points to Ramon Malpica's two and moved the total to 163-145.