WBC light welterweight champion Regis Prograis’ strength coach Evins Tobler says that Devin Haney & his team have disrespected Regis ahead of their December 9th fight, and they will suffer for it on the night.
They picked Haney as a challenger because they think he’s slipping after his recent fight with Danielito Zorrilla. Haney’s name appears first in the promotional banners over the champion Prograis.
That’s an insult when you have the challenger ahead of the champion, particularly when it’s a young fighter who is still wet behind the ears like Haney.
In a way, Tobler feels that it’s a good thing that Haney (30-0, 15 KOs) feels that Prograis (29-1, 24 KOs) is looking like an easy mark now because he says that he wouldn’t have gotten the fight against the pampered 24-year-old Bay Area native Haney if he’d looked good in his last fight.
That performance from Prograis worked in his favor because Haney & his team felt that they’d seen weakness in him and pulled the trigger on this fight.
Tobler feels that Haney’s experience is deficient for him to be going up against the hardest puncher in the 140-lb division, Prograis. He says that as far as he’s concerned, Haney’s only quality fights are these four guys:
Vasily Lomachenko
George Kambosos Jr.
Jorge Linares
Joseph ‘JoJo’ Diaz
Tobler adds that he thinks Haney clearly lost to Lomachenko last May and that he was shaken up in his fight with Linares. Some would argue that Kambosos, JoJo Diaz, and Linares weren’t high-caliber fighters, as there are a number of better fighters than them in the lightweight division.
Haney not experienced enough
“The facts are that Devin Haney ain’t really had no fights. He had four real fights in his career, and that was Kambosos, Linares, Lomachenko, and JoJo Diaz, and then he fought an ancient Gamboa,” said Regis Prograis’ strength & conditioning coach Evins Tobler to Lukie Boxing.
You can’t count Yuriorkis Gamboa as a real fight for Haney because he was 40 years old when he fought him and fought two divisions above his best weight class of 126.
“He has not been in a fight like this his whole entire career. You got the hardest puncher in the 140-lb division [Prograis],” Tobler continued. “Yeah, he [Haney] can box, but Regis can box too, and he can punch. On December 9th, we’re going to see what happens.
Prograis is going to have to close the distance a lot better against Haney than he did in his last fight against Zorrilla because he’ll get outboxed if he can’t cut off the ring or if he’s timid about going after him.
Against Zorrilla, Prograis looked like he was afraid to walk straight in after getting dropped & staggered by him.
“To me, it’s all disrespect because the only reason they [Team Haney] took the fight is because they think Regis is slipping, and thank God for that because he’s not slipping,” said Tobler.”It is disrespectful to his craft, and he’s a two-time world champion.
“How do you have a fighter like Devin Haney, who got hurt by a little bitty Linares, and he really lost to Lomachenko, and now he’s going to come and deal with this monster at 140?”
Linares caught Haney with a perfect shot in their fight to stagger him. Haney was fighting in a reckless manner, and he paid the price.
“He’s a boxer. Even before the Lomachenko & Lopez fight, I told everybody in the camp that everybody was watching the fight. I said, ‘Loma can move, but when he gets hit in the mouth, it’s going to change.’ When Haney gets hit in the mouth, it’s going to cease,” said Tobler.
“I’ve been with Regis for ten years. All the work that we’ve put in. We’ve got 25 knockouts, and the last that we had in [London] England [against Josh Taylor] was a [twelve round] majority decision [in 2019].
“He’s like my son. I’ve been working with this kid for years. This kid has never missed one day of training. So, we’re going with two different caliber athletes as men. It’s different when you step in the ring, and everything has been given to you when you step in the ring when you’ve had to work from the bottom to get here.
“I don’t like people overlooking. They always overlooked Regis from day one. He’s a nice guy, but he can box. He’s ready to fight,” said Tobler about the face-off between Prograis and Haney.
Prograis hasn’t had the big-name promoters to give him a boost. ‘When you stand on someone’s shoulders, you can see high.’ Now that Prograis is finally with a major promotional company, it should benefit him. The only problem is, he’s facing a really popular fighter in Haney, who has the youth, hype and is fighting at home.
“Regis has worked too hard. Devin Haney will not walk away with that WBC belt,” said Tobler about his prediction on the fight. He won’t walk away with that. That belt will stay with Regis Prograis.”
For Prograis’ sake, he’s going to need to really put it on Haney because the judges aren’t going to do him any favors. He’s fighting Haney in his backyard in San Francisco, and he’ll likely win the close rounds.
