BALTIMORE — Calvin Ford addressed Gervonta “Tank” Davis’ opponent directly.

“I need you to push his buttons,” Ford said to Frank Martin, who will challenge for Davis’ World Boxing Association lightweight title Saturday night in Las Vegas. “Because I haven’t seen it yet. I know what’s under this hood. We must show the world what ‘Tank’ Davis really is.”

Ford would know better than anyone. The trainer has watched almost every punch the 29-year-old Davis has thrown since he was a youth learning in the Upton Boxing Center in West Baltimore. For years, he has maintained that even as Davis has built his undefeated record along with one of the most ardent fan bases in boxing, he has yet to show his best.

Will Martin, undefeated but untested on boxing’s biggest stages, be the one to unlock peak Davis?

Davis tried to suggest as much at a testy prefight press conference Wednesday in Las Vegas, talking trash to Martin even as others spoke and promising, “I’m going to break you up.”

Was this real animus or simply a sign that Davis has learned how to sell a pay-per-view fight against an opponent who’s unknown to all but hardcore boxing fans?

That wasn’t a concern when last he laced up his gloves against an equally telegenic young star in Ryan Garcia. It was easily the biggest event Davis had ever headlined, and he delivered, both as a draw and in the ring, where he stopped the hard-hitting Garcia.

Now he’s back, expecting to show he’s lost nothing as a fighter or an attraction after a tumultuous year in which he served more than six weeks of jail time in his hometown.

The Martin fight is Davis’ first in 14 months and his first since he served his sentence, initially in home detention and then in prison, after pleading guilty to hit-and-run charges stemming from a 2020 crash in Baltimore.

Davis was accused of driving his new Lamborghini into a car occupied by four people and then abandoning the scene. He pleaded guilty to four charges in February 2023: leaving the scene of an accident involving bodily injury, failing to notify an owner of property damage, driving on a suspended license and running a red light.

In May 2023, Baltimore Circuit Judge Althea Handy sentenced Davis to 90 days home detention at the Baltimore apartment of his trainer, Calvin Ford, saying she saw no indication of remorse from the fighter. “He believes he is above the law,” she said.

The next month, sheriff’s deputies took Davis into custody because he had moved twice, first to a room at the Four Seasons Hotel and then to a luxury condominium he purchased in Locust Point, without the judge’s permission. Davis’ attorney argued that he made the move because of security concerns, but Handy was unpersuaded, ordering him to serve the remainder of his sentence behind bars.

Davis complained about Handy on an Instagram Live session from jail, noting that his children could not visit him and calling the judge “crazy.”

The hit-and-run case was only one chapter of a turbulent period that coincided with Davis’ ascent to become one of boxing’s top attractions.

He was charged with simple battery domestic violence in connection with a February 2020 incident in Coral Gables, Fla., in which he was accused of “pulling his arm back and then forward towards the victim, which is consistent with a strike to the face.” That case was discharged in 2022.

Two days after Christmas 2022, Davis was arrested in Florida for allegedly striking a woman with a “closed hand type slap.” Prosecutors dropped a domestic violence charge in May 2023 because the alleged victim did not want to move forward with the case.

As his legal troubles swirled, Davis and the highest profile opponent of his career, Garcia, drew 1.2 million pay-per view buys and a live gate of $22.8 million for their April 22 fight in Las Vegas.

Only a handful of current fighters have drawn audiences on that scale, and Davis moved to 29-0 when he dropped Garcia with a sharp body punch in the seventh round.

He reached a new professional pinnacle, and less than two months later, he was in jail with his career on hold.

“I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be in there,” he recently said on a Premier Boxing Champions documentary hyping the Martin fight. “It was a learning experience. It showed me that’s not where I want to be.”

Now that Davis (29-0, 27 knockouts) is back, PBC is counting on him to be one of the key stars in its new pay-per-view relationship with Amazon Prime, which will carry Saturday’s fight. He previously headlined pay-per-view shows for now-defunct Showtime Championship Boxing.

Martin (18-0, 12 knockouts) won’t bring as many fans as Garcia but could present an interesting puzzle in the ring. He’s left-handed, almost three inches taller than Davis, more powerfully built and an adept counter-puncher. He can’t match the champion’s explosive power or big-fight experience, but he might not offer an easy target for Davis, who likes to feel out opponents before pouncing in the middle rounds.

“I’ve just got to be who I am,” Martin said, thanking Davis for the opportunity to fight as a pay-per-view headliner.

Davis was in no mood to keep things cordial at the prefight news conference, labeling Martin a fake tough guy and a frontrunner.

“What are you bringing to the table that I haven’t seen?” he asked the underdog challenger.

“He was shaking a little bit,” Davis taunted after Martin stepped to the microphone.

“I’m so scared,” Martin shot back sarcastically.

Martin’s promoter, former welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr., also got in on the back-and-forth, telling Davis, “You talk way too much, bro.”

“I back it up,” Davis replied.

After yapping in Martin’s face as they posed for photographs, he faked a punch and cackled delightedly — satisfied with the scene he had created — when Martin raised his arms in a defensive posture.

“You see what y’all getting, right?” Ford said, seemingly convinced that Davis’ competitive juices were sufficiently stirred.

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