Gary Russell Jr took some time to speak to our friend Marcos Villegas of Fight Hub TV and share some of his thoughts on the state of boxing, his career, and why he thinks Gervonta Davis and his promotional team have been cherry picking opponents and trying to fool the public into thinking they’re great wins. Check out some excerpts of what Russell Jr had to say below.
Russell on having an old school fighter’s mentality and what he thinks of the new generation of fighters coming up
“The sport getting weak. The sport is getting weak and is getting watered down. They got YouTubers fighting in this shit, you serious?! Come on, the sport getting weak. This is a real gladiator, barbaric sport. You have people that don’t want to fight other people because they feel as though they might lose or it’s too much of a task or too much of a risk. That’s some sucker shit. I’m a real dog, I’m really cut from that old school cloth with the Marvin Haglers and them guys back there. That was more my speed.”
On who he wants to fight next
“I’m pretty sure you’ve seen my interviews, you know who I want. I definitely wanted the Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis, I still want him. I wanted to break my foot off in Leo, Leo ran away from me for the longest. He was in my weight division, we could’ve made it happen. Everybody that was in 126, when they was fighting, Shakur Stevenson, Josh Warrington — whoever the guys was at the time, when they had the opportunity to compete against me, none of them guys was in a rush to get in the ring with me.”
On what he thought of Tank’s fight against Barrios
“I thought it was a strategic fight — it was strategized and it almost fuckin’ backfired. It was a real strategy fight and it almost backfired. They’re cherry picking. They’re cherry picking, what I mean by that is they’re picking the easiest task, whoever they feel is the easiest task or easier fight is, and fighting that person. And with Barrios, he was fuckin’ losing. Floyd had to come in the corner and tell him ‘aye, you down on the scorecards, you gotta get this guy outta here to win this fight.’
“Even when he was competing against Leo, he was losing that fight. He was down on the scorecards in all the rounds until he hit Leo. So I think it was strategic. I know for a fact he won’t stay his ass up there at 140. He ain’t gonna stay at 140, not with that performance.”