Devin Haney’s attempt to hold onto his four lightweight belts while challenging for a title in another weight class smacks of insecurity, says Regis Prograis.
Prograis, the WBC 140-pound titlist from New Orleans, is in advanced talks to face Haney, the undisputed lightweight champion, in the fall, in what would be Haney’s first fight at the weight class. Haney is coming off a competitive if highly controversial win over three-division titlist Vasiliy Lomachenko in May.
But Haney, a promotional free agent, submitted a petition to the WBC to allow him to retain his lightweight title while simultaneously fighting Prograis for the sanctioning body’s 140-pound belt, which Prograis owns.
In an interview published Tuesday, Prograis railed against what he feels is Haney’s shameless attempt to insure himself in the event of a potential loss in a 140-pound title fight.
(Hours later, BoxingScene.com confirmed that the WBC effectively turned down Haney’s request, giving the Las Vegas resident instead a “Champion-in-recess” designation at 135. That would allow the mandatory challenger at 135, Shakur Stevenson, a chance to fight the next highest rated opponent, Vasiliy Lomachenko, for what would theoretically be the vacant WBC lightweight title.)
“It’s bullsh!t,” Prograis said of Haney’s maneuver in an interview with ESNews. “He can’t keep his belts. [WBC head] Mauricio [Sulaiman] should strip him. He can’t keep his belts. Let someone else fight for all the belts at 135.
“He trying to have a protection plan, he trying to come up to 140, see if he can fight me, see if he can get this belt, which he not going to do—I’mma knock him the f— out and beat him up bad—and then try to have a cushion at ’35 to say, ‘Oh, I’m still undisputed.’ No, we not doing that. If you come up to fight me, you stay at 140. You gotta fight me for my belt and that’s how it’s going to be.
“Have confidence in yourself. You can’t have a cushion at ’35 and say, ‘Oh, I’m still undisputed at ’35.’ No! If you come up to 140, you come up to 140. Now, I signed my part, now it’s on him to sign his part.”
Sean Nam is the author of Murder on Federal Street: Tyrone Everett, the Black Mafia, and the Last Golden Age of Philadelphia Boxing.