One of the biggest stars in boxing, Davis has added layers to his game over the years. He can walk opponents into concussive power shots — as he did in his May KO of Rolando “Rolly” Romero — but also outbox foes over 12 rounds with his southpaw jab. “Tank” has bounced between 130, 135 and 140 pounds, but appears to be settled at lightweight for the time being. He’s never faced anyone approaching the top level, and that will change if he emerges victorious from the Garcia matchup. A superfight with top contender Ryan Garcia is penciled in for April 15 see in yahoo.com Las Vegas.
This is all subjective. After all, most of the fighters on this list will never face each other, sometimes even when they’re competing in the same weight class. That’s the reality of today’s fractured boxing landscape.
In 2020, while Zhang made a rare visit back home the day after Chinese New Year, his father died of a sudden cardiac arrest at home during COVID-19 lockdown in China. Zhang mistakenly believed his father to be choking and attempted the Heimlich maneuver to no avail.
Following the setback, Zhang scored back-to-back inside-the-distance wins over Joyce, including a spectacular third-round KO in the September rematch. The pair of wins solidified Zhang as ESPN’s No. 5 heavyweight, and he was favored to defeat Parker, too.
But the Chinese fighter had his shorter and lighter opponent in trouble from early on as Joyce provided a static target for Zhang’s booming left hand and plenty of work for his corner as cuts opened up.
Hrgović participated in the 2010 AIBA Youth World Boxing Championships, held in Baku, Azerbaijan. He beat Jozsef Zsigmund in the first round, Fargan Omarov in the quarterfinals and Joseph Parker in the semifinals to earn a place in the tournament finals, where he faced Tony Yoka. It was the first of three future meetings in amateur competitions. He beat Yoka by points to win the gold medal. Hrgović earned a 10 000 kuna payout from the Croatian Boxing Federation for this victory.
Down a warehouse-lined stretch of Paterson, New Jersey, a heavyweight boxer pounds the punching bag in an otherwise quiet gym. Boxers aren’t an unusual sight in this small town just a few miles from Manhattan; most notable among homegrown products are former WBO junior welterweight titleholder Kendall Holt and Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the hard-hitting middleweight contender who was the only man to stop Emile Griffith.
After winning third place in the unlimited weight class in boxing in the 2001 National Games of China, he was called in as a sparring partner for the Chinese national boxing team in 2002. In 2003, he lost 22:8 in the first round of the 2003 World Amateur Boxing Championships to Grzegorz Kiełsa. At the 2004 World University Boxing Championships, he lost in the final to Rustam Saidov. Zhang enrolled at Zhengzhou University in 2005 and graduated in 2009 majoring in sports training. At the 2005 World Amateur Boxing Championships in China, he beat Vugar Alekperov 20:11 before losing to eventual champion Odlanier Solis (17:7).
Zhang first met Kurt Li (李茂沛), his English translator (2012–) and his co-manager (2021–) when Li was a staff member handling application forms at the Department of Sports in the 2000s. Zhang asked Li for an application form and Li, a Sichuan Mandarin speaker, did not understand him.
At the age of 17 she moved to Beijing, where she worked various odd jobs: cashier at a supermarket, kindergarten teacher, security guard and hotel desk clerk. In 2010 she found a job at a local Beijing gym as a fitness instructor, and was allowed to use their equipment for free after the gym closed in the evenings. During that time she would also pick up Brazilian jiu-jitsu, after watching others grappling there. She later switched to a front desk job, through which she got to know fighters who trained at the gym, one of them being her idol Wu Haotian, a pioneer of Chinese MMA. After they became acquainted in 2012, Haotian brought her to Black Tiger Fight Club. There, she was noticed by coach Cai Xuejun, who recognized her potential and started training her in MMA.
He took third place at the 2007 World Amateur Boxing Championships in Chicago, thus qualifying for boxing at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where he won a silver medal. His fight was the last event of the 2008 Olympics. His coaches were disappointed he missed the publicity that would have accompanied the final gold medal for China. Despite that, he attracted a lot of attention by being the first Asian to win an Olympic medal in the unlimited weight class. At the 2012 Olympics, he was defeated on points in the quarterfinal by Anthony Joshua, the future unified heavyweight world champion.
Hrgović qualified for the 2015 European Amateur Boxing Championships. Victories over Dean Gardiner, Mikheil Bakhtidze and Mihai Nistor earned Hrgović a place in the finals, where he was to fight Florian Schulz. It was the first time in eleven year that a Croatian boxer qualified for the finals of the European Amateur Boxing Championships. He won the tournament with a unanimous decision win against Schulz.