Davis gives reason for turning up two hours late for Garcia presser

Garcia was not best pleased by Davis’ punctuality and tore into his rival for his ‘lack of professionalism’. “Look at how he represents himself, he’s not even here,” he said to the Showtime broadcast before taking to the stage. “It’s been over an hour. It’s unprofessional. You know, it’s only gonna kinda serve as a negative for the overall success of this event.

“We’re already kind of rushing it in a way, so it kind of shows his being unprofessional and kind of continues a pattern of his character and his integrity as a person and as a professional. That’s just how it is.”

“You’ve seen mega fights as well that have longer stretches of promotion,” Garcia added. “You know, this is quite quick. We’re about six weeks out and this is our first press conference, you know? When I’ve seen things in the past, it’s been longer, so I feel like it’s rushed, just maybe a little bit [because] of his personal issues.”

After a lengthy delay to the originally proposed 5.30pm start time, the press conference got underway without Tank, who appeared 20 minutes into the introductions. The Baltimore boxer went on to apologise for his actions during a press scrum following his first face-off with Garcia and revealed why he had been so late.

“It was ridiculous,” Davis told a group of reporters. “Just traffic, not prepared, things like that. I wanna say sorry to you guys for having y’all waiting and things like that. It was very unprofessional for me.”

Davis and Garcia square off on April 22 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight is scheduled to take place at a 136lb catchweight with a 10lb rehydration clause on the day of the fight.

Garcia, the much bigger man, recently made the switch to super-lightweight (140lb) after struggling to make the lightweight limit (135lb) in his most recent outings. Meanwhile, Davis is a natural super featherweight (126lb) but has campaigned at lightweight and super-lightweight as well. 

Despite the hefty cut, Garcia isn’t concerned about making the weight or the rehydration clause. “I don’t think it’s gonna be a problem,” said Garcia “because I don’t like to gain that much weight anyways after the weigh-ins. I pretty much walk around in the ring at 148, so 146 won’t be too much different.”