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Barclays Center, Brooklyn – WBA “regular” lightweight champion Gervonta Davis (27-0, 25 KOs) was surprised that Rolando Romero (14-1, 12 KOs) went down as hard as he did in the sixth round.
In what was a competitive fight, Romero stepped in to throw a right and was countered by a big left hand that dropped him face-first into the ropes.
Romero beat the count, but he got up on very unsteady legs, and the fight was quickly waved off.
According to Davis, he didn’t throw his left hand that hard – but the force of the punch was significantly elevated because Romero walked right into the shot.
He compared the sequence to Manny Pacquiao’s dramatic knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez in their fourth encounter in 2012. Pacquiao walked right into a perfect counter that knocked him out cold – and that ending also happened in the sixth round.
“The crazy thing is that I didn’t even throw it that hard. He just ran into it. He just ran into it. Something like when Pacquiao got caught. I didn’t even throw it that hard and he’s the one who ran into it, when he was talking that it was going to be me,” Davis said.
“I knew that I could get into his head, just from when we weighed in. I knew his goal was to move in front of me (on stage during the weigh in) so when he went in front of me he didn’t realize that the stand was coming to an end so I just tapped him and he fell.”