SAN ANTONIO – Rolando Romero remembers two instances when Gervonta Davis didn’t show up for their scheduled sparring sessions a couple years ago in Las Vegas.

The polarizing Romero, who has never sparred with Davis, hopes the unbeaten Baltimore native is more willing to face him in a fight that counts. The brash lightweight wants to face Davis next in the high-profile fight Romero believes can take his career to the next level.

“Gervonta Davis. That’s what I want next,” Romero told BoxingScene.com. “Gervonta Davis. I’ve been wanting that fight forever.”

The 25-year-old Romero must defeat Sweden’s Anthony Yigit on Saturday night at AT&T Center to at least remain in some sort of contention to eventually land a fight versus Davis, who has headlined back-to-back Showtime Pay-Per-View events. Even then, Floyd Mayweather and Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe probably won’t seriously consider Romero as a potential opponent for the ascending Davis.

Mayweather’s company promotes Davis and Romero, but Davis is its franchise fighter and attempting to develop the heavy-handed Romero against other opponents makes better business sense than knocking one of them off. Pragmatism aside, Romero hopes Mayweather and Ellerbe grant him the opportunity that he wants.

“That means it’s easy to make, I would think,” Romero said. “Like I said, it should be easy to make. I hope it’s next because I wanna move my career and get all the other belt-holders. Why not start with the one in the stable that’s easier to get to?”

When asked if that’s a realistic expectation, Romero replied, “I don’t f-----g know if they will. I just know that’s the fight I want. I’ll knock him the f--- out. I’ll knock him out.”

As confident as Romero is that he’d defeat Davis, the Las Vegas native was impressed with the powerful southpaw’s performance against Mario Barrios last month. Davis dropped the significantly taller Barrios three times on his way to an 11th-round stoppage in Davis’ 140-pound debut June 26 at State Farm Arena in Atlanta.

The 26-year-old Davis (25-0, 24 KOs) jumped up two weight classes to battle Barrios (26-1, 17 KOs), who was down on all three scorecards entering the 11th round.

“He looked good,” Romero said. “I can’t take that away from him. He looked good. He beat a fighter that I felt was gonna be a lot more difficult. In the early rounds, there was no action. But in the later rounds, he did look good.”

Romero is willing to challenge Davis at either the junior welterweight limit of 140 pounds or the lightweight maximum of 135 pounds, at which Davis defeated Yuriorkis Gamboa by 12th-round technical knockout in December 2019.

Romero (13-0, 11 KOs) and Yigit (24-1-1, 8 KOs) will meet in a junior welterweight, non-title bout on the Jermell Charlo-Brian Castano undercard because Yigit came in 5¼ pounds overweight Friday for what was supposed to be a 12-round fight for Romero’s WBA interim lightweight title. Showtime will broadcast Romero-Yigit as the co-feature of a tripleheader scheduled to start at 9 p.m. ET.

If Romero overcomes Yigit, a late replacement for an injured Austin Dulay, he’ll likely call out Davis again in the post-fight press conference.

The closest Romero and Davis have come to fighting thus far was an incident at ringside before the Errol Spence Jr.-Mikey Garcia fight in March 2019 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

“One night in Dallas we were about to start swinging on each other in front of Floyd,” Romero said. “It was when Spence fought Mikey. It was literally right before the main event started. We were at ringside. I was surprised no one was recording that sh!t.”

According to Romero, Davis bumped into him from behind to instigate the situation.

“He just walked up and I thought one of my friends pushed the sh!t out of me,” Romero recalled. “And then I see this motherf-----! I turn around and I’m about to swing at him, and he goes and runs behind one of Floyd’s bodyguards. I said, ‘All right.’ And then Floyd cursed him out.”

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