Promoter Eddie Hearn wants the winner of the WBC junior welterweight title fight between champion Regis ‘Rougarou’ Prograis 29-1 (24) and challenger Devin ‘The Dream’ Haney 30-0 (15) to face Ryan Garcia 23-1 (19) next.
New Orleans southpaw Prograis, 34, will make the second defence of the WBC belt he won against Jose Zepeda last year when he takes on undefeated former undisputed lightweight champion Haney, 24, at the Chase Center in San Francisco, California on December 9.
It will be Haney’s first world championship fight at 140-pounds.
Popular Californian Garcia, 25, has his own assignment in the last month of the year. He will be looking to rebound from his lone professional loss to Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis when he takes on once-beaten Oscar Duarte 26-1-1 (21) at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas on December 2.
Matchroom Boxing boss Hearn sees Garcia as a perfect future challenger for the WBC belt.
“We’ll make the Ryan Garcia fight [next],” said Hearn on Tuesday. “DAZN knows that the winner of this fight should fight Ryan Garcia.
“Ryan Garcia is with DAZN, he’s with Golden Boy. That fight is so easy to make right now and I think whoever wins this fight, if it’s Devin Haney, if it’s Regis Prograis, it’s a February, it’s a March fight in Vegas in Los Angeles against Ryan Garcia.
“It’s a massive, massive fight for boxing. The winner of this fight is the man at 140 and Devin Haney vs Ryan Garcia is a fight that has been talked about for a long time.”
Haney is open to the idea but he hasn’t ruled out a return to the lightweight division where he still holds the WBA, WBO and IBF world titles.
“Of course, that is the fight Eddie [Hearn] wants to make,” he said. “We got to see [what is next] so many big fights at [lightweight] and [junior welterweight].”
The other big name that interests Haney is WBO junior welterweight champion Teofimo Lopez 19-1 (13), who moved up from lightweight last year and claimed his first world championship at 140-pounds with a unanimous decision win over previously undefeated Josh Taylor in June.
“It just comes down to what makes sense,” said Haney. “Those are two huge fights, obviously Teo is more legacy, belts, whatever, whatever, but also I got the belts at [lightweight]. Of course, I want to get the belts, but right now it is what makes the most sense for me.”
While Prograis signed with Matchroom in May and had his first fight with them in June against Danielito Zorrilla, Haney is an independent contractor open to working with any promoter including Hearn’s outfit, who he has boxed for six times before.
“That was the goal of doing co-promotional deals [so I could] make the biggest fights happen,” said Haney. “Not letting that ‘across the street’ term stop me from being great.”
Hearn elaborated on the relationship in an interview on Matchroom’s YouTube channel.
“I think when you map out the career of a fighter, you have to come in with the big sell,” Hearn said. “Then you have to deliver it. Too many people in the sport say, ‘Yeah, we’ll do this’ but they haven’t got the minerals or the ability to make it happen.
“We were lucky. Ourselves and Devin go back a long way. We had a pact together that he would become Matchroom’s first [male] undisputed champion. Unfortunately, he had to take a deal that he was railroaded into taking. We talked about it. He said he would be back and he’s always been a man of his word.”
