Oscar De La Hoya – one half of the promotion of Ryan Garcia versus Gervonta Davis – is confident that the fight will be an incredible success should it go ahead as planned.
With Davis’ victory over Hector Luis Garcia now done and dusted, the pair are free to sign contracts and finalise their deal for an April 15 catchweight bout in Las Vegas.
The 136lb fight represents a welcome change in the sport of young, undefeated stars being pitted against one another via promotional companies and broadcasters working together.
Garcia is promoted by De Le Hoya and has a deal with DAZN whilst Davis is a PBC fighter with his bouts shown on Showtime. The broadcasters have reportedly agreed to work together to both air the fight on their pay-per-view platforms – something De La Hoya confirmed to the MMA Hour before predicting the business it would do.
“We’re all working together to blow this one out of the water. We want to make sure that this event here, because it’s such a special fight, we want to make sure that this fight does 2, 2.5, 3 million homes … Realistically, close to 2.5.”
De La Hoya is one of the few people in the sport who can actually boast seeing those sort of numbers – his 2007 fight with Floyd Mayweather was reported at around 2.4 million buys.
There’s no doubt that, given the pairs’ respective followings, the fight will do big things – and fans hope that it will pave the way for other fighters to see the merit in testing themselves against the best rather than strategically moving towards titles.