Former trainer Teddy Atlas says Ryan Garcia started off well but then quickly abandoned his game plan beginning in the second round, which eventually cost him the fight against Gervonta Davis.
Atlas believes that Ryan (23-1, 19 KOs) showed a failure of discipline by going after Gervonta instead of keeping the shorter-armed fighter on the outside the whole night like he should have done.
“He just thought, ‘Okay, I can end it right here,’ and he went away from his discipline if he had that discipline if his camp did have that,” said Teddy Atlas on his channel about Ryan Garcia abandoning his game plan early against Tank Davis.
“They didn’t show me that they had the right plan. Tank showed me that him and his team had a good, strategic plan. I didn’t see that for the most part except for the first round [for Ryan], but I didn’t see beyond that.
“So I don’t know how much faith to put in it. I didn’t see that from his [Ryan] camp. From the Tank camp and the Tank perspective, I saw a good battle plan, and they stuck to it. Everybody talked about the jab of Garcia, but Tank had to use his jab too. So he didn’t get dominated in that area, so he can stabilize Garcia a little bit.
“There’s two ways for the shorter man to get to the taller man. One is to go get him, work your way in. The other way is to get them to come to you, and in the second round, that happened. He got forced into that situation a little bit when he got buzzed a little bit.
“Where he gets tremendous credit is where he [Tank Davis] kept his cool, kept his mind, and kept his composure and how he stayed calm in an uncommon environment.
“Even when he was trying to survive and do whatever he had to do, Garcia was trying to rough him up a little bit. He thought he had an edge, thought he could get rid of him, and thought he could end the fight right there. He was going after him, and Tank survived that and did what he had to do.
“He also had the mindset where he though, ‘I’m going to get this guy where I want him. He thinks he’s got me where he wants me? No, no, no. I’ll do what I got to do to survive getting dinged here, but now he’s close to me. You know what? I’m the spider. I got the beetle in my web.
“‘Now, I’m going to get a moment now, and I’m ready for that moment. I’m looking for that moment where he’s too close now. I’m going to get a chance to catch him now,'” said Atlas about Gervonta.
