Devin Haney After Title-Unification Bout With Ryan Garcia Next
WBC lightweight champion Devin Haney has a new opponent in mind, just a couple days following Garcia vs. Campbell, an event in which he attended.
Haney witnessed Ryan Garcia capture the interim WBC lightweight championship by TKO’ing Luke Campbell at 1:58 of round seven, making himself the new mandatory challenger. This was an incredibly impressive victory for Garcia. Campbell is a very talented, elite boxer.
Granted, Campbell was coming off a defeat, and hadn’t fought since August of 2019, the same amount of time Garcia was able to go 2-0 in.
Campbell’s only defeats prior came to Yvan Mendy via split decision, which he avenged via unanimous decision, a split decision to Jorge Linares in a back-and-forth war that could’ve gone either way, and a unanimous decision to Vasyl Lomachenko.
There’s no shame in losing to any of those three, and Garcia became the first man to finish Campbell, as he did right at the beginning of the second half of the bout.
Garcia called for a bout with Gervonta Davis next, and while that’s a very compelling, exciting match up, doesn’t it make more sense for him to try and unify his new title?
The undisputed champion is Haney, the interim champion is Garcia, this is the fight to make.
Haney had the following to say on this potential match up:
“Our plan is to press for the fight next (Garcia). It shouldn’t be much pressure to put on the WBC to make this fight. I shouldn’t have to force them, or force (Garcia) to fight me. I mean, he’s my mandatory. They should be putting pressure on me to fight him! We just gotta see.”
Garcia improved his record to 21-0 with 18 knockouts over the weekend, while Haney has fought as recently as November, 2020, where he defeated Yuriorkis Gamboa via unanimous decision, defending his title for the second time, and improving his record to 25-0 with 15 knockouts.
What’s more, both of these men are still just 22-years-old, which is absolutely astounding. Two 22-year-old world champions, and they both also had very extensive, successful amateur careers as well.
Garcia went 215-15 as an amateur, capturing 15 national titles, while Haney went 138-8 as an amateur, capturing seven national titles.
This is the next best fight to make; Teofimo Lopez will still be around, should he decide to stay at 135 lbs, Vasyl Lomachenko, Gervonta Davis, they’re not going anywhere. Let’s unify this belt, see what happens, and then prepare the winner for one of these names.
Does Devin Haney vs. Ryan Garcia happen next?
