Gervonta Davis’ announcement that he will retire next year raised some eyebrows but only him fulfilling his promise should be the surprise.
If Tank really wants to retire, if he’s really had enough of the business, the political shenanigans and the invasions to his privacy, if he has what he deems enough money and genuinely wants to devote all his time to his young child, he would have packed up his gloves already.
There is nothing whatsoever stopping him.
Like there was nothing stopping Joe Louis from walking away when he promised to do so while in the midst of his long reign, or Sugar Ray Robinson when he kept coming back as if as good as new, or Muhammad Ali after the third Joe Frazier fight, or Larry Holmes when still unbeaten, or Mike Tyson following the 91-second trouncing of Michael Spinks, or Oscar De La Hoya when he reached his self-imposed age limit of 30, or Floyd Mayweather when he repeatedly insisted he’d had his last fight in the noughties and beyond, or Tyson Fury – who’s retired almost as many times as he’s fought.
The lure of the ring and all that comes with it might be the most powerful and toxic drug in sport. For boxers, it’s more than just a primal urge to exchange punches, it’s about the status to which they’ve become accustomed and how that status makes them feel. It allows them to stand tall in all walks of life, to rightly feel proud of themselves and their talents. Consider where many of them came from, too. The tale of the boxer who grew up poor, with a barely existent family life while scrapping with the law, is archetypal for a reason. To break free from that, and to then feel adoration and experience achievement, is the very embodiment of gratification.
Yet the urge to retire, however fleeting, is of course genuine in the moment. The notion that boxers are completely fearless or unaware of the dangers of their trade is a grave misconception. Ask Davis, or any boxer, if they’d like their children to grow up to be noble fighters, to walk in their shoes and take the same blows to the head, and very few would answer affirmatively and without hesitation.
Also consider the timing of his proclamation. He is about to enter a three-month training camp, the kind of which he has ample experience. He knows how hard it gets, how dark it can be, and what is required of his mind and body to get into fighting shape. He admitted, too, that he doesn’t like the hoopla surrounding his contests. The press conferences, the apathetic interviews with the constant invitations to say or do something stupid for the benefit of whichever YouTube channel is ramming a camera down his throat. That whole process, of selling a fight and preparing for battle, is ahead of him yet again.
It's what comes afterward that makes it all so difficult to kick, however. The thrill of the ring walk in a crowded arena, the nervous energy that fuels every muscle to work in tandem, and that irreplaceable and wholly euphoric feeling of victory. It’s a rush like no other – and one with a comedown eased by that aforementioned sense of being not only a fighter, but a triumphant and unstoppable fighter. It’s such a high, in fact, that to exist in a life without the promise of another, when those superpowers inevitably fade, is too often a torturous transition.
And it is that realisation – that one day they won’t be able to do it anymore – which makes the breaking of retirement promises inevitable. Right now, for Gervonta “Tank” Davis, it’s easy to talk about retirement because he also knows, deep down, that his day to leave the sport hasn’t come yet. He knows he can still do it. He knows opportunities are still rife. He knows the crowd will still come out and cheer. And he knows, for the time being at least, that he can perform at the highest level. Therefore, because he’s still in the driving seat of a top-of-the-range luxury car, he will also presume he can put his feet on the brakes any time he pleases.
The trick is to do it at the right time. And it’s a trick that can’t be taught nor one that comes naturally. Yet be sure that for Davis, and all the others at the peak of their powers who teased the end of their careers, retirement won’t be so easy to talk about when he knows – whether privately or otherwise – that his best days have gone. Because in that moment, when the abyss of retirement is forced upon him, he will yearn with all his might to be as powerful as he is today.
Davis, who has just turned 30 years old, is talking about retirement, not because he feels he’s achieved all there is to achieve or earned all there is to earn, but because he knows, like the 20-a-day smoker mournfully lighting up their next cigarette, that one day he must stop.