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In the end, Devin Haney was not going to let any potential contractual hang-ups get in the way of an opportunity to inscribe his name in the record books.
The WBC lightweight titleholder from Las Vegas has reportedly agreed to face WBO, WBA, and IBF titlist George Kambosos Jr. June 5 at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne, Australia for the undisputed lightweight championship. The fight is part of a larger multi-bout package that Haney made with Lou DiBella, the promoter of Kambosos, and Top Rank Inc., the promotional company that has an exclusive network arrangement with ESPN, which will be televising the fight.
The understanding is that if Haney (27-0, 15 KOs) beats Kambosos (20-0, 10 KOs) on June 5, he is obligated to face Kambosos again in Australia later that year, assuming Haney remains at 135. If Haney beats Kambosos two consecutive times, he may then be in line to fight Vasiliy Lomachenko next year on ESPN Pay-Per-View.
Haney said he did not object to many of the demands proposed by Team Kambosos.
“I pretty much agreed to everything that they wanted,” Haney told FightHype.com “No matter what it was. I didn’t argue. We didn’t get [anything] our way, but we didn’t do [any] arguing. We said, ‘Whatever we can do to make the fight happen.’ If I go over there on another network, with another promoter, which is my promoter now, to make the fight happen, so be it. If I have to rematch you twice in Australia, so be it.
“It didn’t matter. I just wanted the belts. I want my name in the history books forever. There have only been six people that did it and I look to be the next.
“There will finally be a king in the lightweight division, and it will be me.”
Haney, 23, has taken flak from critics in the past couple of years for being an “email champion,” an appellation derived from the fact that he did not exactly earn his WBC lightweight title directly through a fight. Haney was installed by the WBC as the organization’s outright WBC lightweight titlist in 2019, but only after then unified lightweight titlist Lomachenko decided to drop the WBC belt in favor of the organization’s “Franchise” version.
Haney now has a chance to do what few fighters have ever done in the four-belt era: to completely unify a division. Those stakes were apparently not lost on Haney, as he and his team accepted terms that others may have construed as nonstarters. It helps that Haney is financially secure, having been compensated handsomely by his former promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing, so he was able to keep his eyes focused on what he feels to be the bigger picture.
“It’s about legacy for me,” Haney said. “I’ve made a lot of money already. So, it wasn’t about the money here. Of course, you can always make more money. Of course I want more money. But it was about legacy and I’ve been begging for the big fights for so long now.
“People thought that I was bluffing and stuff like that. This is truly what I wanted. I wanted to be the king of the lightweight division. That’s why when they came up with all these demands, I said, ‘Yup, yup, yup. What’s next? Yup.’ Whatever you guys want to do we can do it.”