ATLANTA – Gervonta Davis realizes he appeared fatigued as he entered territory Saturday night that he hadn’t reached in any of his first 22 professional fights.

Davis still insisted after stopping Yuriorkis Gamboa that boxing beyond the ninth round for the first time didn’t tire him out. Baltimore’s Davis gave himself a “C-plus” for his performance, but he contended it wasn’t due to conditioning that was questioned during Showtime’s telecast, on social media and elsewhere.

“It probably looked like I was tired, but I wasn’t tired,” Davis said during the post-fight press conference. “His game plan was to try and take me into deep waters and things like that. That’s what I heard, that his game plan was to try to take me into deep waters. So, I wasn’t tired. But there was shots that I was catching him with, and he wasn’t going nowhere. So, as a fighter, you know, if you can’t really knock a guy out, you start working your way, start picking your shots, so that’s what I was doing. It was never a point in the fight that I was super-tired.”

CompuBox counted only 28 punches per round for Davis and openly questioned the 25-year-old champion’s conditioning in its post-fight report. The Cuban-born Gamboa threw nearly twice as many punches overall than the conservative Davis (78-of-617 to 120-of-321).

Despite dropping Gamboa three times and beating him by 12th-round technical knockout, the heavily favored Davis exposed himself to criticism about his conditioning because he struggled yet again to make weight.

Even though he moved up five pounds, from 130 to 135, to box Gamboa, the 25-year-old Davis initially weighed in at 136¼ pounds for their 135-pound championship match. The strong southpaw came back to the Georgia Athletic & Entertainment Commission’s scale more than an hour later at 134½ pounds.

That enabled Davis (23-0, 22 KOs) to win a vacant version of the WBA’s lightweight title by beating Gamboa (30-3, 18 KOs). Davis still paid an undisclosed fine from his seven-figure purse to the commission for coming in overweight, some of which went to Gamboa.

However Davis’ detractors critique his performance, his handlers were pleased that he boxed into the championship rounds for the first time.

“I’m very happy that we went the rounds,” Leonard Ellerbe, CEO of Mayweather Promotions, told BoxingScene.com. “I thought that Gamboa gave a very valiant effort. He used his experience very well. Again, this is a great experience for Tank. But he showed you that he has the ability to close the show at any time. I’m very, very happy.”

Ellerbe gave Gamboa credit for withstanding knockdowns in the second and eighth rounds. Referee Jack Reiss didn’t stop their fight until Davis sent Gamboa to the canvas a third time, with just 1:43 remaining in it.

“Gamboa was surviving the rounds because of experience,” Ellerbe said. “Tank could’ve been sharper. He said that himself, but these are learning experiences, and these are the fights that take you to the next level. This was a great experience for him.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.