Devin ‘The Dream’ Haney 31-0 (15) landed with a splash in the junior welterweight division when he annexed the WBC belt from titleholder Regis ‘Rougarou’ Prograis 29-2 (24) at the Chase Center in San Francisco, California on Saturday night.
Despite moving up from lightweight where he dominated ad the undisputed champ, the 25-year-old Haney looked the bigger man in the ring and boxed superbly for every minute of every round to earn a well deserved unanimous decision victory by scores of 120-107 across the board.
Southpaw Prograis, 34, never seemed to get going. His punch output was low and his connect rate, according to CompuBox, never exceeded five in a single round.
Haney had Prograis on a string, walking him onto sharp, accurate punches and dropping him with a right cross in the third.
“I was just on the canvas and was like ‘what happened?’ He doesn’t have power to where it’ll hurt you, but it’s the quick power. I was like, all right, this dude does have it. You can’t just run in with him,” Prograis said after the fight.
“He’s definitely better than I thought he was… He has sneaky power for sure. He doesn’t have the concussive power to knock you out just like that, but he does have sneaky power to where he can run you into it.”
Prograis broke the CompuBox record for the least number of punches landed in a fight with 36, an average of just three punches per round. Haney made him look second rate.
“Man, I’m not gonna lie, I told all my people in the dressing room, they’re crying, I’m like ‘bro, pick your head up’. It’s a fight, you gonna win, you gonna lose,” Prograis said.
“For this fight, I trained my ass off. I trained for four months and it wasn’t good enough – that’s gonna happen in life. You can train, you can do everything – it might not be good enough. But I’m gonna go back to the drawing board and get better. That’s what I do.”
Haney proved to be a big draw in his hometown, fighting in front of a sellout arena. The name on everyone’s lips after the win was undefeated Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis 29-0 (27), but Haney said the 29-year-old Baltimore southpaw doesn’t want the smoke.
“If he really wanted to fight me, he’ll be making it.” Haney said post-fight. “That it’s a big fight and it’s the best fight for boxing, but he only talks down on the fight, but like I said many times, they say everything. Well, let’s fight.”
Haney’s father and trainer Bill Haney made his own case for a fight against Davis in an interview with Fight Hub TV.
“I want to see who’s gonna mention Tank other than us. Tank, Tank, Tank, where you at Tank because guess what? We’re free and you are,” the senior Haney said.
