Gervonta Davis vs Francisco Fonseca

Gervonta Davis remained unbeaten by stopping Francisco Fonseca in the eighth round at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on 26 August 2017, but the victory was overshadowed by an unusual finish and by Davis having surrendered his IBF super-featherweight championship on the scales the previous day. Davis, then 22, entered with an 18-0 record containing 17 knockouts and had established himself as one of the most highly regarded young punchers in American boxing. Fonseca, a 23-year-old Costa Rican, was unbeaten at 19-0-1 with 13 stoppages. Davis weighed 132 pounds, two pounds above the 130-pound limit, and was consequently stripped of the IBF championship. Fonseca weighed exactly 130 pounds and remained eligible to win the vacant title had he defeated Davis. The contest took place immediately before Floyd Mayweather Jr met with Conor McGregor and was therefore staged before an unusually large international audience.

The circumstances were a considerable disappointment for Davis, who had enjoyed an excellent first half of 2017. In January he had taken the IBF championship from the unbeaten Jose Pedraza with an impressive seventh-round stoppage at Barclays Center, and in May had travelled to London to dispose of mandatory challenger Liam Walsh in three rounds. Fonseca represented a much less familiar name and entered as an enormous outsider, quoted at approximately 35-1 in Las Vegas. Most of his professional career had been spent in Costa Rica, and he had not previously met an opponent of Davis’s standing. Nevertheless, Fonseca showed from the beginning that he had not travelled merely to survive. He competed respectably through the first two rounds, working behind orthodox punches and forcing Davis to take more time than had generally been expected to establish control.

Davis began to assert himself during the third round. The Baltimore southpaw increased the force and frequency of his attacks midway through the session and began finding openings for the powerful left hand which had been central to his rapid rise. Fonseca remained willing to engage, but Davis was now landing the more authoritative punches. In the fourth, the American’s confidence became conspicuous. He dropped his hands behind his back at one stage and, after being caught by Fonseca, theatrically pretended to have been hurt. It was unnecessary showmanship rather than evidence of complete domination, for Fonseca was still competing, and Davis was not producing the sharp, disciplined performance he had shown against Pedraza and Walsh earlier in the year.

The middle rounds continued with Davis holding the advantage but without breaking the challenger down as rapidly as his reputation and the pre-fight odds had suggested. Fonseca remained durable, continued to attempt to impose himself, and refused to be intimidated by Davis’s gestures. The fight also grew rougher. By the seventh, Fonseca was leading with his head during some of the close exchanges and pushed Davis towards the ropes, prompting referee Russell Mora to issue a warning. Fonseca also landed a straight right hand while Davis was off balance near the ropes. Davis remained ahead through seven rounds, but the challenger had succeeded in making the contest less straightforward than anticipated.

The finish came only 39 seconds into the eighth and immediately produced an argument. Davis first landed a left to the body which, according to his own later account, hurt Fonseca. As the Costa Rican bent forward and began to turn away, Davis brought a left hand down onto the back of his head. Another movement of the left arm followed as Fonseca was falling, and the challenger went to his hands and knees. Mora began counting rather than ruling a foul. Fonseca remained down and was counted out, giving Davis the knockout victory at 39 seconds of the round. Television replays made clear that the final blow had landed illegally behind the head, and Fonseca immediately protested that he had been struck illegally while going down. Davis maintained that the earlier body shot had already hurt his opponent and suggested Fonseca had used the illegal punch as an opportunity not to continue.

The official result nevertheless stood as a knockout victory for Davis, raising his record to 19-0 with 18 stoppages and extending his run of consecutive knockout wins to ten. There were no official scorecards to consult because the bout did not reach the distance. The outcome, however, was less satisfactory than the simple result suggested. Davis had been in front and was increasingly imposing his heavier punching, but Fonseca was still competitive when the illegal blow produced the final knockdown. The referee’s decision to administer a count rather than allow Fonseca recovery time or penalise Davis ensured that the conclusion remained open to criticism.

The evening therefore represented an awkward interruption in Davis’s rapid ascent rather than another clean championship success. He had entered 2017 as a promising contender, defeated Pedraza decisively to become the youngest American world champion at the time, and then destroyed Walsh in his first defence. In Las Vegas, he failed to make the championship weight, lost the IBF title before entering the ring, and then produced a performance which was less precise than either of his previous two outings. Fonseca, despite being given little chance beforehand, had lasted into the eighth and made Davis work considerably harder than expected. Davis ultimately left with his unbeaten record intact, but without the championship and with the manner of the stoppage disputed. It was a victory on paper, though not the polished demonstration of superiority that had been anticipated when the contest was made.

I never thought this was one of Gervonta Davis’s better nights. He’d looked sharp against Jose Pedraza and Liam Walsh, but here he missed weight, lost the IBF belt on the scales and then boxed with too much swagger against a man he was expected to beat comfortably. BoxRec confirms the title was only available to Fonseca because Davis came in over the limit.

Fonseca deserves more credit than he usually gets for this. He stayed in the fight, landed enough to make Davis think and was still competing in the eighth. The finish was poor. Davis hurt him to the body, but the punch that sent Fonseca down landed behind the head, and the replay made that clear.

For me, Davis was always the better fighter and probably would have got him out of there anyway, but that doesn’t make the finish clean. A foul is a foul. Davis got the knockout at 39 seconds of the eighth, but it was an untidy end to an untidy weekend for him.