The imperfect Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis and his ‘perfect’ mark in the ring

Perfection. It is the thing all boxers seek to both achieve and embody, despite knowing in the end it is unobtainable. The nature of their sport leaves no chance of it, of course. Even if considered “perfect” in terms of their form, or perhaps a specific performance, there are no perfect human beings found in a boxing ring, just as there are no perfect human beings to be found outside of one.

At best, we might call an unbeaten fighter perfect, though only with the word softened inside inverted commas. We might say that the fighter retired with a perfect record, for example, all the while failing to acknowledge in this statement anything beyond the facts and figures. Failing to acknowledge, say, the number of times the boxer made a mistake and was hit and hurt, or simply the number of times he or she managed to grab victory from the jaws of defeat.

A boxing ring is a place of work too treacherous for perfection to exist. There are too many ways for a man or woman to be reminded of his or her imperfections between first and last bell. Not only that, to even choose the ring as a place in which to spend time and make a living suggests some imperfection — if only pertaining to thought, decision-making — from the outset, does it not?

Indeed, it takes a certain type, we often hear, and never is that type perfect. In fact, what typically drives young boys and girls to the boxing gym in the first place is a set of circumstances one would never describe as perfect or even normal. Instead, they find their way to boxing gyms through a desire to escape the chaos going on in their lives and in their heads and then try to create for themselves opportunities and, yes, a more perfect world.

At the very least it will be a world of their own making, with a clear set of rules, boundaries and the potential for reward. At the very least it will be a world they understand and can control.

Via boxing, these boys and girls can take their imperfections and make them beautiful — or just financially fruitful — and embrace every scar as a memento and every setback as a lesson. Undefeated fighters can even stretch the illusion of perfection for as long they keep winning and we, the audience, continue believing in it.

“We worship perfection because we can’t have it,” wrote Fernando Pessoa in “The Book of Disquiet.” “If we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.”

Gervonta Davis, the current WBA lightweight champion, will aim to extend his unbeaten record this Saturday when he fights Lamont Roach in defense of his title. Davis, like so many, is a man perfect only on paper and only if that paper relates to his success in a boxing ring. In that world of regulated violence, he holds a record of 30-0, with 28 of those 30 wins coming by knockout.

His ring moniker is “Tank.” Even that, as a nickname, strikes one as perfect, for it serves to encapsulate exactly what Davis, an aggressive southpaw, brings to a fight every time he sets foot in the ring.

For the most part, too, he has been dominant. Not perfect, no, but certainly as dominant as one can hope to be in amassing 30 straight wins. Whether at featherweight, super featherweight, lightweight or even super lightweight, Davis has won world titles and more often than not beaten opponents in that most special way: by picture-perfect knockout.

A lot of Davis’ finishes tend to be violent and are therefore analogous to his upbringing. After all, the 30-year-old came to boxing not because it was something to do for fun but because it represented, for him, refuge and survival.

He was raised in the Sandtown-Winchester community in West Baltimore. He found boxing — specifically, the Upton Boxing Center — at the age of 5 and focused on that as his primary form of education. There was soon nothing to compete with it, for it was not long before Davis dropped out of school altogether and proved so proficient in the art of fighting that nobody, at that time, saw the danger in him having nothing else. At that time all that mattered to Davis was boxing and the boxing gym. Boxing was the only thing he knew, while the gym was the only place he felt safe.

Every inch the prodigy, Davis went on to win over 200 bouts as an amateur, twice beat Lamont Roach, his next opponent, and lost just 15 times before turning professional at the age of 18. Mature, but only in a boxing sense, he was a teenager in a man’s world, yet possessed a level of experience, both in the ring and at home, which belied his years. He then put this experience to good use, becoming in no time at all one of the standout young prospects in the sport and a man from whom great things were expected. Even Floyd Mayweather, the template for so many in Davis’ situation, was quick to anoint him.

Everything, for a time, seemed perfect.

In 2017, one of his busiest years as a pro, Davis began by defeating José Pedraza in seven rounds to win his first world title, the IBF super featherweight belt. He then defended this belt when stopping Liam Walsh inside three rounds in London, and also Francisco Fonseca, whom he stopped in eight.

Three weeks after beating Fonseca, however, an arrest warrant was issued for Davis on Sept. 19, 2017. He was accused of first-degree aggravated assault for an incident that, according to Maryland court records, had taken place on Aug. 1, 2017. A $100,000 bond was subsequently posted for Davis’ release, with him due to appear in court on Oct. 19, by which point the charge was changed to misdemeanor second-degree assault.

In court, Davis’ childhood friend, Anthony Wheeler, would allege that Davis caused him a concussion by hitting him on the side of the head with a “gloved fist” at the Upton Boxing Center in West Baltimore. He then later dropped the charges on the day that Davis was due to stand trial.

The following year, in 2018, Davis boxed just once, stopping Jesús Cuellar inside three rounds to win his second world title, a WBA belt at super featherweight. That fight happened in April and by September Davis had been arrested in Washington, D.C., after he and another man became embroiled in a fist-fight for which nobody was paid. Punches, according to the police report, were landed around the upper body. It was said that both men tried to flee before the police turned up.

Davis was then back to getting paid for fights in 2019. Now a super featherweight, he successfully defended his WBA belt twice — beating Hugo Ruiz in a round and Ricardo Núñez in two — before moving up to lightweight to win a vacant WBA strap when halting Yuriorkis Gamboa in 12 rounds. He also managed to avoid the kind of drama that had previously threatened to undo all his good work in the ring.

And yet, in February 2020, Davis was again arrested, this time on charges of battery domestic violence against a former girlfriend. That incident, which was filmed, occurred at the Watsco Center at the University of Miami during a basketball game. In the video, spread all over the internet, the boxer was seen grabbing a woman’s shirt with his right hand close to her throat.

Later that same year, in October, Davis produced one of the most brutal knockouts in boxing history when he poleaxed Leo Santa Cruz in the sixth round of a fight in San Antonio. The shot, a peach of a left uppercut, traveled from the tips of Davis’ toes to the tip of Santa Cruz’s chin and rendered the Mexican fighter unconscious, his right leg bent, his left leg straight.

But, of course, no sooner had Santa Cruz rediscovered his bearings than Davis, a ticking time bomb, was alleged to have caused a serious car crash after running a red light following a birthday party in downtown Baltimore. He was indicted on March 22, 2021, which is when we learned that Davis’ Lamborghini Urus had hit another car and left it smoking, sending its four occupants, including a pregnant woman, to the hospital. He then allegedly fled the scene in a Camaro.

In the end, Davis would accept a plea deal. He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident involving bodily injury, failing to notify an owner of property damage, driving on a suspended license and running a red light.

Also in 2021, Davis stopped Mario Barrios in Round 11 of a WBA super lightweight title fight and went the distance for just the second time in his career against Isaac Cruz. The only other time a Davis opponent had heard the final bell was in 2014, when the unheralded Germán Meraz reached the end of a scheduled six rounds.

Meanwhile, in December 2022, with a fight against Héctor García on the horizon, Davis found himself arrested and jailed in Florida, charged with battery domestic violence. In the audio obtained from a 911 call, a woman could be heard saying, “He’s going to kill me,” and on this woman’s lip there was an abrasion, police observed. This, according to the woman, was due to Davis striking her with a “closed hand slap,” yet the woman eventually retracted her accusation, meaning the Héctor García fight went ahead as planned.

Better yet, three months after bludgeoning Héctor García in January, Davis was enjoying a lucrative opportunity against Ryan Garcia, in so many ways a kindred spirit. Together, they made quite the double act, Davis and Garcia. Davis enhanced his status globally when breaking Garcia down with body shots and finishing him in the seventh round of one of the biggest fights of 2023.

One month on and Davis was finally sentenced to 90 days of house arrest (to be served at the home of his trainer, Calvin Ford) and three years’ probation for his part in the 2021 hit-and-run car crash in Baltimore. He then violated the terms of his home detention and was taken into custody in June, whereupon Davis was instructed to serve the remainder of his sentence in jail.

Forty-four days later, he was out.

If history tells us anything it is that good men do not always make great fighters, nor are great fighters always good men. For many, in fact, balancing a fighting career and a turbulent personal life is a natural but precarious thing, with much of what makes a fighter’s personal life turbulent also what makes his professional life so exhilarating and often successful.

A fighter, it is true, does not need to be good, never mind perfect. He or she just has to be able to harness his or her violent leanings and self-destructive streak and channel certain impulses in the direction of money and opportunity as opposed to jail.

Get it right and the fighter will, like Gervonta Davis, experience both the good and the bad of his or her imperfections, perhaps even capitalizing on the former. Get it wrong, however, and the fighter becomes just the latest in a long line whose impulses were as much a burden outside the ring as a benefit inside it.

Namibia’s Harry Simon, for instance, was perfect for a long time — perfect, that is, in a boxing sense. With a record of 23-0, and with world titles at both junior middleweight and middleweight, he was considered by many to be one of the best all-arounders in the sport circa 2002.

That was until the day Simon’s Mercedes-Benz ML500 killed three Belgian tourists — Frederick de Winter, a 31-year-old father; Michelle de Clerck, a 29-year-old mother; and Ibe de Winter, a 22-month-old baby — in a head-on collision at Langstrand, a small beach resort, in November of that year.

At that point, Simon, a man prone to recklessness and with a history of dangerous driving, was no longer a boxer, much less an unbeaten, perfect one. He was instead the cause of three deaths, forever haunted as a result. He was also, three years later, found guilty of culpable homicide and handed a two-year jail sentence. By the time he started his sentence, on July 9, 2007, Simon had lost everything. He had lost the ability to box on account of his injuries — a broken right arm and a broken right leg — and he had lost both his freedom and peace of mind.

“It took me five years to recover,” Simon told me. “It was up and down. I had to go to America for surgery, go to London for surgery, come back to South Africa for surgery … it was tough. That whole period was very difficult for me. I just took one day at a time and tried to get through it.

“I wondered if I would box again and I was worried that would never be possible. I was in my prime at that time in my life and I actually lost everything. I was supposed to fight guys like Felix Trinidad and Bernard Hopkins for big money, but that couldn’t happen. Everything I wanted to happen could not happen anymore. I accepted it. I pray a lot and that has helped. I had to go to church. There were a lot of people encouraging me as well. This is life and I have to accept it.

“But that was one of the hardest things I have ever done,” he added, speaking now of jail. “You lose everything and still they put you in jail. It was like being buried alive. That is what it felt like.

“I was training while I was in jail, so I always hoped to box again. When I came out, I was almost 100% and ready to box. I wanted to be a world champion again.”

Out of the ring for a total of five years, once Simon returned he realized that everything he needed for a return — chiefly, athleticism, ambition and purpose — had all but deserted him. Now, with no alternative, he boxed just to make money. Now he boxed because it was the only thing he knew how to do and the only domain in which his imperfections were still embraced and potentially monetized. Even today, at the age of 53, he occasionally appears in exhibition bouts in his homeland, each one a reminder of what could have been.

Perhaps, when all is said and done, the only thing separating the likes of Harry Simon from so many others, including Gervonta Davis, is the matter of timing and fate. After all, in terms of how they live, every boxer with a proclivity for drama and danger runs the risk of unravelling and causing the kind of damage capable of ending lives, not just fights. These boxers, too, are more than aware that causing damage in the ring has always been, and will always be, the safest way for them to go about their day.

“I would say I was a naughty boy,” Simon said of his childhood. “I was a naughty boy and I would get in trouble a lot. I would always be fighting everywhere. I would fight at school and also when I wasn’t at school.

“I would say I was a bully,” he then added after a pause. “As a child I would bully other children. Some of them were older than me, but I still bullied them. I didn’t have any fear. None at all. I don’t know why that was. I had 10 siblings and I’m the last born — the 11th. It was a difficult childhood for me because I had to grow up without a father. I felt his absence. Every boy needs a father. I was not taught well. If my dad was there, he would teach me not to bully other people. He would teach me to do the right thing. I was not disciplined at all. But boxing gave me discipline, 100%.”

Harry Simon’s professional boxing record, as if frozen in time, stands at 31-0. Meaning it is perfect, yes, but only if you know nothing about the man, his story, or indeed what it is to be perfect.