Roach Denied Victory by Controversial Draw, Referee’s Missed Knockdown Creates Anger

Lamont Roach (25-1-2, 10 KO) says he should have won the fight against WBA lightweight champion Gervonta Davis (30-0-1, 28 KOs) on Saturday night and he would have if the referee had made the right call in the ninth when Tank took a knee after he hit him with a punch at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Many fans on social media felt that Roach won, and they’d never seen Tank look so bad before. The inactivity, weak resume, and him overlooking Roach may have cost him.

Roach says he wasn’t relying on the knockdown for him to win because he thought he’d done more than enough to win the decision. The judges scored it a 12 round majority draw by the scores 15-113 for Tank, 114-114 and 114-114. It certainly looked like Roach had won the fight even with the referee blowing the call in the ninth.

“I thought I should have won without that being counted as a knockdown,” said Lamont Roach to the media, talking about the blown call by the referee, who chose not to give him credit for dropping Gervonta Davis in the ninth round when he took a knee.

It obviously helps that Tank Davis was the superstar in this fight, and the one that sold out the Barclays Center. If the referee had made the right call in the ninth, he would be messing up things for a popular money-maker.

“If he had to wipe sweat out of his eye, he had to wipe sweat out of his eye. But the rules do state that if you voluntarily take a knee, that’s an automatic eight-count. I wasn’t relying on that. I was relying on what I was doing in there,” said Roach about Tank Davis.

“I was taking control, I was landing more shots, and I was landing more power shots. I thought I was doing my thing. So, I’m not really that frustrated about that, but if that was counted as a knockout, I would have won a majority decision.

“Did y’all see me in the ring say, ‘Keep counting?’ I was like, ‘Why did you stop? Keep counting,’” said Roach about how he didn’t understand why the referee stopped counting after Davis took a knee in the ninth. “I honestly don’t know [about why the referee didn’t rule it a knockdown].”