20 lBOXING NEWSlJANUARY 11, 2018 http://www.boxingnewsonline.net➤ It was Taylor, not Davies, who arrived as a potential
world champion in July. It was Taylor, not Davies, who
proved he is the superior boxer. Yet Davies appeared
nonplussed by it all. He maintains it is he, not Taylor,
who will continue to grab the column inches and
find himself involved in lucrative fights triggered by
what’s nowadays described as ‘beef’. It’s the way of
it, I suppose. Always has been, always will be. Davies
knows this, as does his promoter, Eddie Hearn [inset].
“Fighters have got to carve out their own
image,” he told me last year. “Ohara Davies
is a good example. He’s a car crash on social
media. But I’ll tell you now, people will have
an opinion on him. Ninety
per cent will hate him and
want to see him lose, but at
least they are talking about
him. When he’s on, you’ll
tune in. You’ll either say,
‘Yeah, I like this guy, he’s
gobby,’ or you’ll go, ‘Jesus,
I follow this guy on social
media, what a p***k, let’s
see what he’s got.’ That’s
better than the alternative which is,
‘Who is this guy? Oh, he’s all right.’
You’ve got to have something.
“A lot of the time it’s our job [as
promoters] to carve that out. I always
say, ‘What is your story?’ Even if it’s
cheesy, even if it’s as simple as you
coming from Wales and wanting to be
the next Joe Calzaghe, make sure you
tell that story. Only a small percentage
of fighters are going to come out with
an image or the chat to do that, so we
have to find that sometimes.”
By all accounts, Hearn didn’t make
his fighter apologise for his latest
outburst, yet there was an apology
nonetheless. A strange thing, too, that apology. It
pacified a few; confused many more. For if Davies is
going to play the heel, issuing an apology following a
heel power move is akin to a serial killer embarking
on a bloody rampage with an accompanying team ofparamedics. It defeats the whole point of the initial
act.
What’s more, the measured apology suggested
Davies isn’t the bad guy he thinks he is but is instead
playing the part of a bad guy and isn’t quite sure how
bad he is allowed to be in the current climate. He’s
the worst kind of bad guy: a bad guy who says sorry;
a bad guy who probably isn’t really a bad guy at all.
“It was done in an attempt to provoke him into a
fight with me on February 3, knowing he didn’t
like The Sun [newspaper] from a previous
tweet,” Davies said of his unsavoury tweet
to boxer Tommy Coyle. “I thought it was due
to untrue stories they had
written about him, having
no idea it was far deeper.
“One thing I do is act
in certain ways to anger
my opponents and play
the bad guy, which I enjoy
playing. I am petty to bring
up physical appearances
or past losses to anger my
opponents, but my intention
here was to literally anger him and the
people who don’t like the paper.”
Davies then went on to say he was
ignorant to the reasons why some
people, especially Liverpudlians, might
not like the newspaper in question,
before adding, “I’ve read up on
what happened but am not totally
sure what the newspaper had to
do with the 96 deaths [at the 1989
Hillsborough disaster]. I will read up
on it today.
“My intentions were pure. What
people think I meant by the tweet is
not in character and doesn’t reflect
who I am. I train with many fighters and know many
fans and the only ones who hate me are the ones who
don’t know me personally but see some of the stuff
I write online.”
Bizarrely, pinned to the top of Ohara Davies’ Twitter
account is “a message to all my haters”, accompaniedPLAYING THE HEEL:
Could Davies’
‘bad guy’ persona
just be an act?HE’S A CAR CRASH ON
SOCIAL MEDIA – 90%
WILL HATE HIM, BUT
AT LEAST THEY ARE
TALKING ABOUT HIM”
Photos: ACTION IMAGES