Devin Haney spent too long relegated to boxing’s purgatory when his rivals committed worse sins against the sport.
Ryan Garcia failed to make weight for their 2024 fight and went on to drop him multiple times while testing positive for the performance-enhancing drug ostarine. Though the result was changed from a beatdown loss to a no-contest, Haney’s aura as a possibly elite, multi-weight, world champion-level fighter was gone. He was considered washed.
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Earlier this year, I was at the Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles and fans booed Haney when he took to the stage across Garcia ahead of their May 3 Times Square card. People in Southern California preferred to applaud Garcia, even though he was a sports cheat, and despite his disgusting comments about George Floyd and the KKK, rather than Haney, the victim of the cheating all along.
It was a glimpse into boxing’s moral inversion. The villain was made a hero, while the champion was cast aside.
Haney was used to jeers, though, considering fan reaction during the ring-walk for his 2023 fight against Vasiliy Lomachenko. Headlining in Las Vegas, Haney walked to the ring like an outsider — a rare American champion booed in his own country.
The 27-year-old, who outclassed George Kambosos in Australia twice, and who defeated Lomachenko, Regis Prograis and Jose Ramirez to build one of the sport’s most significant résumés today, couldn’t escape the disrespect. And even though he booked a Nov. 22 bout to box then-WBO welterweight champion Brian Norman Jr., a fighter considered a boogeyman for all he’d done to those he’d fought, Haney’s reputation remained at an all-time low heading into this weekend. He wasn’t even a question mark, but an underdog expected to fall to Norman’s power in Saudi Arabia.
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Victories in times like this can rarely come sweeter, because on Saturday, at the ANB Arena in Riyadh, Haney had his own “Y’all must’ve forgot” moment.
He reminded an overly critical industry, media and fan base, that he’s still the special fighter he’d been regarded to be, as he continues to punctuate his Hall of Fame credentials in real time.
Against Norman, Haney’s mastery of boxing through the opening six-round stretch was as good as anything we’ve seen in the modern era, inclusive of Oleksandr Usyk, Naoya Inoue and Terence Crawford.
He showcased one of the best jabs in the entire sport, pumping that piston punch into Norman’s mouth again and again.
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It wasn’t just his fluidity and ring craft that bamboozled Norman, as his check hook in Round 2 buckled the now-former champ’s right leg, and a follow-up one-two — particularly the short-range right hand that popped him on the chin — sent the champion to the floor. Haney lingered over him, and the taunting wasn’t aimed at just Norman. It was a metaphorical middle finger to every critic who had mocked him as broken, exposed and ready to be beaten up.
It was an incredible redemption arc for an American fighter who had reached highs many talents will never hit, and lows that even Garcia, for all his controversies, has yet to experience.
The best may yet come for Haney, who has made a career of running toward the smoke. He is on the cusp of significant fights against Garcia in a rematch, or Teofimo Lopez, the WBO champion from super lightweight with whom he also has a checkered history.
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Even a Conor Benn bout could be box office, despite the Brit’s comments on Saturday’s live DAZN broadcast, calling Haney a “scared fighter” who “didn’t throw a jab in case it hit him back.”
That’s certainly one interpretation of Haney’s skill set, if you fail to recognize what you’re actually seeing. And considering the way in which Benn fights, which is based more on heart and volume rather than timing and technique, perhaps he doesn’t.
Haney’s father/trainer Bill Haney dismissed Benn, saying he should be better known as “Conor When,” meaning, “When is he going to do something in boxing that is on Devin Haney’s level?”
The Haneys are right. Benn, and his promoter Eddie Hearn, are wrong.
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The gap is absurd as Benn hasn’t even won a regional title, let alone what the American has accomplished internationally from lightweight to welterweight.
Haney stood in Riyadh as a fighter who had every excuse to succumb to the spotlight of scrutiny. There was lingering humiliation, concussion memes and armchair coroners calling him finished.
Instead, he punched his way back into the hierarchy of the sport as, arguably, America’s third-best boxer, behind only “Bud” Crawford and Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, considering all the top-tier fighters he’s already beaten, and now winning world championships in three separate weight classes.
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Once regarded among a new set of boxing’s Four Princes — alongside Lopez, Garcia and Gervonta Davis — Haney sent the world a reminder that only one of them has the abilities, record and championships to actually become the King.