Gervonta Davis Knocked Out Frank Martin With A Vicious Combo In The Eighth Round

Gervonta “Tank” Davis (30-0-0, 28 knockouts) made his return to the ring after more than a year away on Saturday night in Las Vegas, as he faced off with the previously undefeated challenger Frank Martin (18-0-0, 12 KOs) for the WBA World Lightweight championship. We hadn’t seen Davis since his knockout victory over Ryan Garcia last April, and despite over a year away, he didn’t show much sign of ring rust in what became an eighth round knockout win.

Martin was a game challenger for much of the fight, often having a response to Davis flurries with strong punches of his own, but he never seemed to truly bother Davis, who continued to walk him down even as he got tagged with counters.

Eventually, Davis was able to back Martin up against the ropes in the eighth and caught him flush with a vicious combination, first a left uppercut that stunned Martin and caused him to drop his hands, followed by a clean left hook that put him out for good.

Davis celebrated the knockout win with a backflip off the ropes, as he knew Martin wasn’t getting up from that left and started his celebration before the referee had even finished the count.

There are a number of potential big fights to make for Davis at lightweight going forward, as Shakur Stevenson holds the WBC belt and Vasiliy Lomachenko holds the IBF belt at the moment. Either would be tantalizing matchups, but as is always the case in boxing, it’s much easier to said than done to get the top fighters against each other.