He wants Andy Cruz.
Nobody has tormented Davis more than the Cuban boxer who won all three times they met in 2019. So even as Davis stood in a corridor beneath the Kokugikan Arena stands Friday, chatting about his unanimous decision over Armenia’s Hovhannes Bachkov in the semifinal, he kept looking at the television a few feet away that was showing Cruz’s semifinal against Australia’s Harry Garside.
Not that Davis really had to watch. He already knew what was going to happen. Cruz is 111-8-0 as an amateur. He’s lost only once since 2018. There was no way Cruz was falling Friday, just as there was no way Davis was going to let Bachkov win a fight the Armenian had turned into something more closely resembling wrestling.
Davis pumped his still-gloved hands when the television showed Cruz ahead by points. He nodded when Cruz’s victory was announced. And he smirked as Cruz danced a jig in the middle of the ring.
Nothing in sports tastes better than revenge, and Sunday is a day that can bring so much of it for the U.S. team when Davis fights Cruz and super heavyweight Richard Torrez Jr. faces Uzbekistan’s Bakhodir Jalolov, a giant of a man who knocked Torrez out cold the last time they fought, sending Torrez out of the arena on a stretcher.
“For all of us, you feel things personally,” U.S. Coach Billy Walsh said Friday.
Walsh calls Torrez’s knockout “great motivation.” Videos of that September 2019 fight at a tournament in Russia have long circulated on the Internet. It is one of the ugliest knockouts you will see, with Jalolov’s left fist crashing against Torrez’s jaw and Torrez instantly tumbling unconscious onto the canvas, lying flat, his eyes shut.
“I told him, ‘This moment will not define you,’” Walsh said. “’What will define you is how you come back from this moment, and you show the character that you are and the person that you are to come back from that defeat to this stage.’”
Then Walsh’s eyes danced from behind the mask he was wearing.
“And if you’re writing a script, this is the script: that you come back, go to the Olympic final and you go beat the guy who put you on your ass,” he added. “That’s what we’re here to do.”
It’s the kind of script that boxing so often produces. For days Walsh had lamented the draw here, an imperfect system based on points because most of the key pre-Olympic qualifiers had been canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. But on Friday he had to admire the way it had worked in the lightweight and super heavyweight classes. There were no better possible matchups than Davis against Cruz and Torrez against Jalolov.
For a country that hasn’t won a gold medal in men’s boxing since Andre Ward in 2004, the potential of the first two golds in 17 years coming in the ultimate of revenge fights is almost too delicious to be true.
“Richard has come back stronger,” Walsh said of Torrez’s return from the knockout. “You have to know the character and the personality and who he is and what he has done [in] getting back to this stage. This guy [Jalolov] is awesome. He’s massive. He’s big.”
“So we are going to give this guy hell on earth on Sunday,” Walsh said.
That’s something Davis seems to want as well in his latest fight with Cruz. At the end of last year, Davis left the U.S. team, a mutual decision made between him and USA Boxing officials after Davis, frustrated by the possibility the Olympics wouldn’t happen, broke the organization’s quarantine curfews and missed some camps. He turned pro and even won his first three fights, two on Canelo Alvarez cards.
He is only back because the canceled qualifier for North and South American countries left boxing organizers here to pick the field based on amateur point totals. Davis’s replacement didn’t have enough points to qualify, but Davis could be added as something of a wild card, along with two other pros who had been a part of the U.S. program.
Davis had already given up his lifelong dream of winning an Olympic boxing gold and meeting Cruz again when USA Boxing called this spring with the invitation to return. Getting the chance to seize both has been too good to be true. He had stormed through the Olympics, knocking out the top seed and almost knocking out another fighter to get to Friday.
Later he was delighted with the way he handled Bachkov’s relentless pushing and holding, dancing out of reach and delivering enough blows to guarantee a victory. He had beaten Bachkov before and had been exhausted from the effort it took to win. He was happy with the energy he still had Friday, considering it a sign of how he has matured as a fighter both mentally and physically.
“I feel like that’s going to be an easy fight,” he said about the gold medal bout while watching Cruz on the television. “I’m bigger, stronger, faster, smarter.”
He grinned.
How lucky he is to have one last chance at the one boxer who has driven him mad.
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Keyshawn Davis goes for boxing gold medal at Tokyo Olympics - The Washington Post
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