Former undisputed middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins has criticised both Ryan Garcia and Gervonta Davis, admitting he’d be ’embarrassed’ if we see no progression towards a potential super fight between the two.
Garcia returned to the ring earlier this year after a 15-month hiatus due to mental health reasons as well as a hand injury.
A unanimous decision victory over Emmanuel Tagoe was backed up by a knockout win against Javier Fortuna last month. ‘King Ry’ is now looking towards a potential bout with Davis, a fight he’s been calling for, for a long time.
With negotiations between the two teams having fallen at the first hurdle, Hopkins’ believes that both sides are to blame for the lack of progress regarding negotiations
When asked about the fight by Fight Hub TV, Hopkins said:
“I’ll be embarrassed if you ask me this in another five months without having nothing concrete.”
“We ain’t going to do the blame game here. No side is blaming the other side, but we should not break the rules in how things are supposed to be done.”
“Do we negotiate as two powerful companies, or do we negotiate through the media and have the media say who’s right or wrong? This is about business. This isn’t even about egos.”
This isn’t the first time we have seen a breakdown in communication between Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy promotions, Garcia’s team, and Al Haymon and Showtime, ‘Tank’s network. Earlier in the year, negotiations broke down for a fight involving Jermall Charlo and Jaime Munguia over broadcasting issues.
Despite the two team’s struggling to strike a deal, Hopkins believes the fighters play a just as important a role in making the fight happening before it’s too late.
“It’s up to both sides to sit down with their champions and hash it out.”
“A fighter should be more vocal than the promoters will ever be. Oscar is still reaching out as much as he can do to bring to entities a super fight to the boxing world.”
“It won’t because we didn’t want the fight. It’ll be because the fighter didn’t really want the fight based on his life, his career. Let them deal with the business part.”
“You deal with the greatness you can achieve. Until the fighter’s career is over with, they can talk about what they should or could have done.”