NOT a “lightweight” division.
“The Fabulous Four” and “The Four Kings” ruled the welterweight division in the 1980s. Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto “Hands of Stone” Duran, Thomas “The Hitman” Hearns and “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler. I’d pay a lot to see these four great pugilists in a roundtable discussion to talk about their respective rivalries. It’d not “pick your poison,” but, “pick your rivalry.”
Anyway, before I segue and digress any further, let’s look at, who’d I say, is today’s “Fabulous Four” or “The Four Princes” instead of calling them Kings because the four aforementioned greats have paid their dues in the sweet science, while these four young men, this early, have already laid their respective claims as being the best in both their division and sport.
Ryan Garcia, Gervonta “Tank” Davis, Devin Haney and Teofimo Lopez ushers in the new breed of, not just potential lightweight greats, but also, a new generation of students of the sport—young professional athletes who want to fight the best in their division right away, young guys who don’t and won’t dodge anyone.
You have other young fighters who are on the outside looking in like Vasily Lomachenko, Jorge Linares and George Kambosos. All four young lions have one-punch knockout power in both hands. Garcia and Davis have two of the largest fan bases in all of boxing. Lopez holds all the belts in the lightweight division after beating Lomachenko by unanimous decision in October 2019.
Garcia and Davis have recently called out each other on boxing great and former heavyweight champion, Mike Tyson’s podcast to the delight of boxing fans all over the world including yours truly. The World Boxing Council has mandated a fight between Garcia and Haney but the latter would prefer challenging Lopez for all the belts and possibly unifying the division. The great thing about all of this is that these young men have not reached the peak of their powers yet.
Davis is 26, Garcia and Haney are both 22 and Lopez is 23.
Haney got himself in some hot water when he, according to ESPN.com, said, “I can tell you this—I will never lose to a white boy in my life,” the 21-year-old said.
“I don’t care what nobody got to say. Listen, can’t no white boy beat me, I don’t care, on any day of the week. I fight a white boy like 10 times, I’m gonna beat him 10 times.”
Davis, on the other hand, was charged with, according to CNN.com, charges of domestic violence after authorities in Florida said he assaulted a former girlfriend.
Davis was “observed battering his former girlfriend,” the Coral Gables Police Department said in a news release. According to the arrest report, the incident happened at a celebrity basketball game on February 1 at the Watsco Center at the University of Miami. The release noted that Davis and the woman have a child together.
Davis, 25, could be seen in video surveillance walking over to the woman, grabbing her shirt “with his right hand close to her throat” and dragging her by her shirt to a separate room,” according to the arrest report. He is charged with simple battery/domestic violence, the news release stated.
We hope that Garcia and Lopez behave themselves as a lot of young people look up to these young boxers. As young professional athletes, they are constantly in the limelight, scrutinized for every move they make and every word they say.
Oh yeah, have I mentioned that all of them are undefeated? Let’s see who’s zero is the first to go.