Report- Top USA Boxing prospect Davis won’t turn pro

With the Tokyo Summer Olympics on hold for another 12 months, there have been questions as to whether one or several prominent Team USA boxers might elect to turn pro and begin their careers, when the sport resumes later this year? However, a report Thursday afternoon says that at least one of them will stay amateur, for now, and go for gold in Tokyo in 2021.

The Athletics boxing Insider, Mike Coppinger, wrote Thursday that the fighter arguably in the best position to win a Gold Medal for the USA, Keyshawn Davis, weighed his options and will be staying amateur:

Keyshawn Davis, Team USA’s top hope to break 16-year drought for Olympic gold in men’s boxing, considered turning pro after pandemic delayed the Games one year. Despite lucrative offers, he tells The Athletic he’ll wait until after Tokyo Games to do sohttps://t.co/6QfSic9fId

— Mike Coppinger (@MikeCoppinger) April 16, 2020

As we wrote last month, the Norfolk, Virginia native Davis is a 21 year old amateur star in the 138 lb. division. And,  he had put on social media shortly after the Tokyo Olympics were postponed by the Coronavirus pandemic that he’s looking to get paid to fight:

View this post on Instagram

I’M GOING PROFESSIONAL!!! 135 WASSUP!!!!? @db3enterprises

A post shared by “Flashy Key” (@businesskeyshawn) on Mar 24, 2020 at 6:59am PDT

Davis is former national Golden Gloves champ (2017) who was second at last year’s World Championships and Pan American games, and he also talked to ESPN.com boxing insider, Steve Kim to  elaborated on his social media post about the intrigue and possible timeline for turning pro,

“I’m not going to lie to you, I’m most definitely thinking about going the other way, meaning turning professional,” he said. “I’m going to keep thinking about it, but most likely that’s what I’m going to do.”

“I’m not going to even lie, I was thinking about the Olympics since I was 7 years old before I even started boxing,” Davis said. “I didn’t even know what I wanted to be in the Olympics for, I just wanted to do it. I honestly thought I would be in the Olympics for track.” 

There’s a lot of people saying that I already fight with no headgear, why waste another year fighting with no headgear in the amateurs, risking getting cut and stuff like that? I already have big options of going pro and being more well off than I am now.”

Obviously, Davis took a few weeks to weigh his options further, and for now, will stay as an amateur.

Davis’s marketability would definitely go up, if he could win a Gold Medal in the delayed Tokyo Olympics. This is something that obviously helped former recent fighters careers, like Andre Ward, who won Gold in the 2004 Athens Games.

And, the most prominent case is going all the way back to Oscar De La Hoya winning Gold in the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics that launched his early pro career and huge money for fights early.

There are at least two other prominent names to also keep an eye on as to whether they will stay as amateurs or because of the limbo of Summer Olympics, go ahead and potentially turn pro like Davis?

They are 20 year old Super Heavyweight Richard Torrez of Tulare, CA, who is a former National Golden Gloves champ and was third in the Pan Am Games last year. Plus, there’s 21 year old Welterweight Delante “Tiger” Johnson of Cleveland, Ohio, who a former National Junior Olympics champ and was also third in the Pan Am Games last year.