Keyshawn Davis was supposed to face Edwin De Los Santos on June 7 in Norfolk, Virginia, in his very first title defense of the WBO lightweight championship belt. However, things didn’t exactly go that way. During the official weigh-ins, the 26-year-old missed weight by 4.3 lbs, and the fight was subsequently canceled. To make matters worse, he and his two brothers, Kelvin and Keon, got into an alleged altercation with Kelvin’s opponent, Nahir Albright, backstage after Kelvin lost to Albright. A massive backlash against the 2020 Tokyo Olympics silver medalist soon followed for his unchampion-like conduct. Thereafter, he was swiftly stripped of his WBO title. It’s been over a month since then, and Davis has finally issued an apology for the incident while hinting at retirement.

“June 7th… the situation messed me up so much… I felt some type of way when the people were just like, ‘I don’t really care,’ like that’s not true. Like after that situation had happened… I was really never right ever since,” Davis said in an Instagram Live session. He explained that he had to lean on his friends and family because he wasn’t himself that night. The Norfolk native revealed that missing weight was just part of it—there were a lot of things happening off-camera that the public didn’t see. “I was snapping at the fighter meetings and that wasn’t right,” he said.

“I apologize to the person that I [snapped] in the fighter meeting… I feel like I just let everybody down,” he continued. Looking back, “I just see and I just hear a lot of things that got set back because of me… And that s–t just is not an easy pill to swallow…” Keyshawn Davis suggested he wanted to take some time before releasing a statement about what had happened “so y’all can really feel me…” Addressing his botched weigh-in, Davis acknowledged the concerns about his lack of interest in the matter.

“I see why y’all were saying like I didn’t care, cuz after I missed the weight, my facial expressions look like I didn’t care. My body language looked like it didn’t care. Like just everything about me looked like [I] didn’t care,” Davis said. He claimed it was a defense mechanism that led people to misunderstand the real reason behind his reaction to missing weight. “What y’all don’t know about me is I come from a lot. And when you come from a lot, you learn how to build a shield up, so nobody can ever even know…”

He added that he knew he was going to miss weight, but he didn’t give a disappointed reaction because “If I show y’all like something is wrong with me, then the energy in the room is going to switch. [I always have to be] ‘The Businessman,’ always be like positive and happy and all that. But now, I’m not doing that [anymore] cuz I won’t do [anything that hurts] myself.” Davis took full responsibility for everything that happened. Turning to the incident with Albright, Davis denied the allegations that he assaulted the Philadelphia native.

“DB3 ain’t put our hands on nobody,” he said. “I don’t have [any] love lost for them Philly boys. No love lost for the Philly boys at all, even for them carrying it that way. Honestly, that s–t was smart. If you want my honest opinion, that s–t was smart. Cuz at the end of the day, I shouldn’t have walked into his locker room. But nobody got banked and nobody got touched.” Davis claims things were blown way out of proportion “because that s–t didn’t happen at all, like for real…”

He even praised his brother’s fight against Albright, dismissing the alleged backstage brawl as brothers being way too “emotional.” However, Davis dropped the real bombshell when he spoke about his future in the sport.

Keyshawn Davis claims to have retired

Since the entire debacle in Norfolk, fans have speculated about what the future holds for Keyshawn Davis. Will he move up in weight, or will he stay at 135 lbs? Davis provided answers for those questions during his livestream. “As far as my career and stuff like that… at this point, I’m damn near retired.”

He explained that he’s already bought a house. Now, the only thing he needs to figure out is how to keep paying the mortgage and raise his son. “So, I don’t really have to stress about it, about not getting back in the ring,” Davis said in the video. However, it’s worth noting that fighters from Top Rank have previously used retirement announcements to boost their publicity.

Teofimo Lopez, Shakur Stevenson, and even Oscar De La Hoya—all have retired just to come back to boxing. While Davis might be serious about his retirement this time, it’s not an unpopular strategy—even former heavyweight champion Tyson Fury has used it on multiple occasions. 

For now, though, Keyshawn Davis seems to be regretful about the things that happened on June 6th and 7th. It’s yet to be seen whether he returns to the sport, but he appears ready to leave things in the past. What are your thoughts on his apology?