This is an interesting fight due to the fact Davis is moving up two weight divisions to face a much bigger fighter in Barrios. Davis is a huge puncher at Super Featherweight but there’s no guarantee he’ll carry his power up to super lightweight. For Mario Barrios this is the biggest fight of his career and a massive opportunity to become a star in America.
Gervonta Davis has a good jab which sets up a lot of his punches though is prone to throwing in unexpected left hooks and left uppercuts. He’s a power puncher who has the technical ability and ring IQ to back his power up. Davis knows where he needs to be positioned in a fight to be successful and actively works towards getting there, often by cutting off the ring as he lacks a great long range arsenal and is much more successful fighting up close where his left uppercuts and body punching can be used to their full extent. He doesn’t throw a lot of punches but is accurate with what he does put out into the ring. His defence is reasonable and he doesn’t get hit by many punches unless he gets lazy and switches off which isn’t something I see happening in this fight.
Mario Barrios is taller than Davis and has a longer reach though not as much as you might expect. He certainly has some power but also isn’t a big puncher and when he stepped up in competition he scored flash knockdowns but was otherwise bullied for most of the fight. The biggest problem he has is his lack of defence especially it seems versus southpaws. In his fight with Batyr Akhmedov he was beaten in the majority of the rounds and was lucky to win the fight after taking a huge amount of damage from a fighter who was both smaller and a southpaw. Davis doesn’t have the same style as Akhmedov but can still take advantage of Barrios’s weaknesses.
I expect early on the fight will be competitive while Gervonta Davis finds his range but as the fight goes on he’ll connect cleanly more and more on Barrios who’s open to an accurate puncher. I think late in the fight Davis will hurt Barrios and likely drop him a few times from body shots or an uppercut after a hurtful body shot. I think Barrios is tight at the weight and the body punches will drain him a lot due to that. Gervonta Davis will win by KO between rounds 7-11.
Boxing Fulcrum 