By Allan Fox: Devin Haney will be getting a nice $3 million payday for the title defense of his WBC lightweight strap against #3 Jorge Linares in the main event on May 15th on DAZN.
Mike Coppinger reporting the 22-year-old Haney’s purse for the match against the former three-division world champion Linares (47-5, 29 KOs).
Haney and the 35-year-old Linares have agreed to terms for the fight for the Matchroom Boxing card at a location that will be decided later.
Boxing fans are already complaining about this fight, saying that Haney got their hopes up by calling out Vasily Lomachenko last week, and now he’s facing Loma’s leftovers.
Linares is a fighter that Lomachenko knocked out in the 10th round in May 2018. The unheralded Pablo Cesar Cano also knocked out Linares in the first round in 2019. With those brutal losses, why then is Linares ranked so highly?
The World Boxing Council decided to give Linares a high ranking. This same organization installed Avni Yildirim as the WBC 168-lb mandatory to Canelo, even though he hadn’t fought in two years and was coming off a loss to Anthony Dirrell in 2019.
The $3 million that Haney (25-0, 15 KOs) will be earning for the fight will be a slight pay raise from the $2 million he received for his last title defense against Yurorkis Gamboa last November.
It’s unclear whether Haney has been bringing in a high number of subscribers to DAZN to justify him getting a $3 million payday for what could be a run-of-the-mill title defense.
For Haney to be getting paid the way he is by DAZN, he has to be bringing in the subscribers because it doesn’t make sense for them to be paying him big money if he’s not drawing high ratings.
What Haney isn’t doing is knocking out a lot of his opponents, as he’s more of a technical fighter in the Floyd Mayweather Jr mold. I’m not talking about the young Mayweather who was knocking guys out when he campaigned as a super featherweight.
The early version of Mayweather has nothing at all in common with how Haney fights. If Haney could fight like the early Mayweather, he’d be making a heck if a lot more than $3 million per fight.
No, I’m talking about the older, slower, and stationary Mayweather, who was earning decision victories at 147 at the end of his career. Haney uses his technical skills to outbox his opposition, although he occasionally scores knockouts against weaker opposition.
Haney’s best wins:
- Yuriorkis Gamboa
- Zaur Abdullaev
- Antonio Moran
- Alfredo Santiago
- Juan Carlos Burgos
- Mason Menard
Linares was a good fighter during his day, but he’s lost two out of his last five fights since 2018, with both defeats coming by knockout.
This is arguably the best opponent that Haney will have faced during his six-year professional career that started in 2015.
Haney will be defending his WBC 135lb strap for the third time since being given the belt by the sanctioning body outside of the ring in 2019.
While Linares clearly isn’t at his best any longer at his advanced age, he’s still faster and more powerful than Haney.
During the prime of Linares’ career, he captured straps at 126, 130, and 135. The knock-on Linares is he won his world titles against less the best opposition, and he’s been knocked out five times in his career.
In other words, Linares has never lost a decision. His only defeats have come by knockouts.
Of those KO defeats for Linares, two of them have come in the first round. He’s vulnerable early in his fights, which may or may not be a problem for him against Haney, who isn’t much of a puncher.