Gervonta Davis criticized Devin Haney today, blaming his loss to Ryan Garcia on him standing directly in front of him and getting nailed with the same left hooks repeatedly during their fight on April 20th.
Haney (31-1, 15 KOs) has said his loss to Ryan (25-1, 20 KOs) was because he cheated, coming in overweight 3.2 lbs at the weigh-in and testing positive for PEDs.
Tank Davis doesn’t buy any of those excuses. He views it as a simple case of Haney not being good enough and too clueless to prevent Ryan from hitting him with left hooks all night.
Tank’s Analysis: Haney’s Predictability
Haney’s tendency to hold constantly played right into Ryan’s hands, as he’s at his best throwing short left hooks with devasting power and quickness. Devin was right there to be hit by Ryan all night and made no adjustments after being hurt in the first and seventh rounds.
Haney should have made some adjustments early on to avoid getting hit by Ryan’s left hook, but he couldn’t, and the reason why is that he’s a clincher.
A big part of Haney’s game involves excessive holding, that’s what he uses to neutralize the offense of his opponents, and the referees allow him to do this without penalizing or warning him.
Against Ryan, Haney was playing to his strength by diving forward to hold and getting hit by his short check left hook. If Haney had stayed on the outside, he would have had a better chance of winning, but he can’t do that because he needs to hold.
“Look at Ryan Garcia vs. Devin Haney, then look at my fight vs Ryan,”
Tank Davis said to the media. “If Ryan looked any different, he probably looked worse [vs Haney]. Bigger, much slower. He only hit him with the same punch I told everybody – a hook, a hook, a hook. Devin was sitting right there to be caught with the hook. And they were talking about this guy as pound-for-pound. Come on, he’s trash, he’s trash.”
What Tank points out is the tendencies that Haney showed in his loss to Ryan will be taken advantage of by other fighters he faces at 140.
These are flaws in Haney’s game that have been there from day one, and he’s been able to get away with it because he’d only fought one good opponent before fighting Ryan, and that was Vasily Lomachenko. He clearly lost to Loma, but the judges gave Haney a controversial decision.
