Two months after all parties declared a done deal was in place, Gervonta Davis and Ryan Garcia are nearly set to fight.
A contract has been sent to Golden Boy Promotions containing details of the proposed super fight, company founder and chairman Oscar De La Hoya confirmed on Tuesday. The Hall of Fame former six-division champion was prepared to review in full with Garcia shortly after a press conference in Los Angeles to promote Golden Boy’s upcoming January 28 DAZN show in Inglewood, California.
“Devil is in the details,” De La Hoya stated on his verified Instagram account in captioning a picture of Garcia and himself with contract in hand. “April 15 lets go!”
The development comes less than three days after De La Hoya took to social media over the weekend to insist that his side was prepared to walk away from the fight if he had not received a contract by Monday. The public threat was taken with a grain of salt, though it was since confirmed that representatives within Davis and Garcia’s immediate teams were already in touch to finalize terms for their targeted springtime affair.
De La Hoya and Garcia (23-0, 19KOs) have both separately insisted that the fight is due to take place on April 15. Garcia previously took it a step further and posted that the fight would land at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Neither the date nor location has been publicly confirmed by Premier Boxing Champions (PBC), who represents Davis (28-0, 26KOs) nor Showtime who will present the event via Pay-Per-View.
The acknowledgement of the contract received comes two months to the day of all parties formally announcing last November 17 that Davis-Garcia was a done deal and due to take place in the first half of 2023.
At the time, it was decided that both boxers would take separate stay-busy fights before their head-on collision, which will take place at a contracted weight limit of 136 pounds. Davis’ secondary version of the WBA lightweight title will not be at stake with the fight occurring just above the divisional limit.
Davis was the only one who proceeded with his interim fight, scoring a stoppage win of Hector Luis Garcia at the start of the ninth round of their January 7 Showtime PPV headliner from Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C, near Davis’ hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. The event shattered the venue’s live gate record with more than $5.1 million in ticket sales. Final PPV figures were not yet released as this goes to publication.
Garcia opted to forgo his own interim fight. The Victorville, California native was on track to face Filipino southpaw Mercito Gesta atop a January 28 DAZN show in Arizona but opted out of the fight just ahead of plans to formally announce the event.
The logic offered by the unbeaten lightweight contender was that he was only interested in fighting Davis and was fine with extending his ring absence another three months to proceed straight to the blockbuster affair. Should the April 15 date hold, it will leave Garcia out of the ring for nine months since his July 16 sixth-round knockout of Javier Fortuna. Garcia also fought three months prior to that, outpointing Ghana’s Emmanuel Tagoe over twelve rounds to end a 15-month inactive stretch due to injury and preceding personal reasons.
It appears now that the fight he has always craved is finally within reach.
“Finaly received contract, time to put finishing touches and we have a fight April 15,” noted De La Hoya. “Let’s go!”
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox