Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero feels that he would have knocked Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis out cold if he hadn’t been pulled from his fight with him on December 5th and replaced by Isaac ‘Pitbull’ Cruz at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
Sexual assault allegations surfaced about Rolly in the build-up to that fight, resulting in him being removed from the fight and replaced by ‘Pitbull’ Cruz.
Although Rolly was eventually cleared and the case dropped, he still lost out on the Tank fight in December. Pitbull Cruz fought well, coming close to defeating the unbeaten WBA ‘regular’ lightweight champion Davis (26-0, 24 KOs).
Rolly said he had the Tank vs. Pitbull Cruz fight scored as a 12-round draw, and he thinks the match made him look “inferior.”
Still, Tank won the fight, and Rolly is being given a second chance to fight him this Saturday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
“I’m going to tell you like this. If I was in the ring that night that he fought Isaac Cruz, Gervonta Davis would have been knocked out cold,” Rolly said to DAZN. “He knows it. That’s not good for him.
“That fight made him look inferior and made him look like s***. I thought it was a good [12-round] draw,” Rolly continued. “Tank is also the favorite and the money guy at the division, so why are they the judges going to give the fight to Isaac Cruz?”
Tank won because he outboxed Pitbull Cruz in the championship rounds, but it was close in the end. If Cruz had a little more power, he would have won.
“The fight is not going to go 12 rounds,” Rolly said. “We do not need judges. We don’t even need a referee. I’m going to beat the f*** out of him.”
“We’ve been chasing a big signature fight for Tank, whether it’s Ryan Garcia or behind the scenes,” said Stephen Espinoza of Showtime to Fight Hub TV.
“We’re still going to do that, but in the meantime, we’ve consistently said, Tank isn’t going to wait for one of those big fights.
“He’s not going to sit there waiting, and we’ve seen a lot of guys in his weight class, whether it’s injury or other complications, they’ve been on the sidelines a lot.
“Tanks not going to do that. He’s going to continue taking the best available guy. I think moving forward, as we see more of Isaac Cruz, there’s not a lot of people that’ll be willing to fight him, especially not willing to fight him on two weeks’ notice when they weren’t preparing for him.
“That’s a testament to Tank. He could have taken an easier touch, but he took one of the best-kept secrets in the division. It was a tough, grueling fight,” Espinoza said of Tank’s fight last December against Cruz.
