By Jim Calfa: WBC lightweight champion Devin Haney says he wants to give Joseph ‘JoJo’ Diaz Jr a worse beating than anyone has inflicted on him when they fight on December 4th on DAZN at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
Haney (26-0, 15 KOs) wants to do a better job of beating the 29-year-old former IBF super featherweight champion JoJo Diaz Jr. (32-1-1, 15 KOs), worse than WBC featherweight champion Gary Russell Jr. did in their fight in 2018.
Russell beat Diaz Jr by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision. What Russell had going for him in that fight was his hand speed advantage.
He was a lot faster than JoJo Diaz, which enabled him to land at will the entire fight. Haney doesn’t have the same speed that Russell Jr. possesses, so it may not be as easy to beat JoJo.
Devin vowing to give JoJo a beating
“What I want to do in this fight is beat JoJo Diaz worse than he’s ever been beat,” said Haney to Fighthype on his fight against Diaz on December 4th.
“He’s been beat once by Gary Russell, and I want to beat him more cleaner and better than anybody has,” said Haney.
“I wanted to get the stoppage with Linares, and I knew he’d been stopped in all his previous losses.
“I came to my senses, and I’m going to go in there and do what I do. If they say something, they do. If they don’t, they don’t.
“A fighter like Jojo Diaz went to the Olympics, and he’s been at the top and been in big fights,” said Devin.
Haney denies he has a glass jaw
Devin says he was dominating the 35-year-old Linares when he got “lazy” in the ninth round and was briefly hurt last May.
Haney says he came out in the tenth round and got hit with the same kind of shot and made it through without any issues.
What the boxing critics noted about the performance was that Haney was forced to hold in rounds nine, ten, eleven, and twelve to avoid getting knocked out by Linares.
Haney was repeatedly hurt by shots during the championship rounds, which took the shine away from his 12 round decision win.
The constant holding that Haney did during the championship rounds bothered the fans, causing them to boo, making him look bad.
To hear Haney explain what happened in the fight, it sounds like he was trying to minimize or whitewash what happened. There was nothing glorious or romantic about Haney’s performance against Linares.
He finished poorly, and the only reason Haney wasn’t knocked out is that Linares let him hold without fighting through it.
“I was winning the rounds so easily, and it was much easier than I thought it was going to be,” said Haney on his fight against Jorge Linares earlier this year on May 29th.
“So, I kind of fell asleep in there, got a little lax, and that’s what happens when you get lax in the fight game,” Haney continued in reflecting on being hurt by Linares.
Devin says he showed he can take a punch
“Linares hit me with a good shot, woke me up, and now I’ve learned that winning rounds easy, but it’s still a fight. You got to fight from round one to round 12.
“It definitely showed that I can take a punch. They say nowadays that I got a ‘Glass jaw’ or something like that, but he hit me right on the chin.
“I might have been hurt, but he didn’t put me down, and he didn’t come back and knock me out in the next round. It shows how good my chin actually is
“I came out in the next round, and he hit me even more, and it didn’t do anything. It just showed that I can take a shot. They can say what they want to say
“Whether they say I was wrong for tying up, I finished the fight, got the job done, and I go on to the next,” said Haney.
