Devin Haney (31-0, 15 KOs) captured his second division world title with ease on Saturday night, beating an overmatched WBC light welterweight champion Regis Prograis (29-2, 24 KOs) by a twelve round unanimous decision.
Fighting for the first time in front of his home fans in San Francisco, California, at the Chase Center, the 25-year-old Haney looked like the second coming of Floyd Mayweather Jr., boxing smartly, using his jab, footwork and defensive ability to defeat Prograis in their headliner on DAZN PPV.
The scores were 120-107, 120-107 and 120-107. Haney all twelve rounds and made it look easy. Prograis appeared to mentally give up on the fight by the seventh round, looking depressed and not willing to put himself at risk by going all out in the way that he needed for him to have had a chance of scoring a knockout.
Part of the problem that Prograis was his lack of size compared to Haney, who looked like he rehydrated to middleweight at around 160 lbs.
It was too much size for any true 140-lb fighter to deal with a fighter the size of Haney, who is already talking about moving up to 147. That’s a good move for him because he’s too big for the 140-lb division, just as he was for the 135-lb weight class before.
It wasn’t a highly entertaining fight to watch if you’re a fan of action, but if you were one of the many who enjoyed watching Mayweather’s pot-shotting, hit & not get hit style of fighting, you were happy as a lark tonight.
As it turns out, the former undisputed lightweight champion Haney’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, picked the right champion for him to become a two-division world champion, selecting the 34-year-old Prograis, who looked even worse tonight than in his controversial win in his previous contest against Danielito Zorrilla last June.
If Haney stays at 140, it’s unlikely that he’ll get the fights that he wants against these fighters:
Ryan Garcia
Gervonta Davis
Teofimo Lopez
Those are the only guys that Haney wants to fight at 140, but it’s unlikely any of them will want to fight him after what he did to Prograis tonight. It was too one-sided, and Haney is too big for any of those fighters. However, if Ryan, Tank or Teofimo are just interested in fighting Haney for money purposes, they might agree to fight him.
Liam Paro destroys Montana Love in sixth round demolition:
Light welterweight Liam Paro (24-0, 15 KOs) livened up the card tonight, stopping Montana Love (18-2-1, 9 KOs) by a sixth round TKO.
Paro, 27, was in first gear through the first five rounds, landing shots at will against a timid-looking Montana, who looked like he wasn’t 100% back mentally from his recent sixth round disqualification defeat to Steve Spark.
In the sixth, the southpaw Paro came alive, knocking Montana down with an uppercut and then putting him down for a second time with a textbook right-left combination.
Montana showed a lot of heart getting up from that, but he was met with a firestorm of shots from Paro, resulting in the referee stepping in to stop the contest. The bout was stopped at 1:47 by referee Thomas Taylor.
The win for Paro showed that he’s a force to be reckoned with in the 140-lb division and someone that is ready for a world title shot. Obviously, that won’t be against newly crowned WBC 140-lb champion Haney, as he’s looking for big names so he can make as much money as possible before he moves up to 147.
Andy Cruz TKOs Jovanni Straffon
Lightweight contender Andy Cruz (2-0, 1 KO) beat Jovanni Straffon (26-6-1, 19 KOs) by a third round knockout. The 2020 Olympic gold medalist Cruz boxed well in the first two rounds, and then poured it on in the third round to get a referee stoppage.
