Devin Haney next fight on PPV in May against Vasyl Lomachenko

By Boxing News - 01/13/2023 - Comments

By Adam Baskin: Devin Haney reveals his next fight against Vasyl Lomachenko will be on ESPN pay-per-view in May, with all four lightweight belts on the line.

Some boxing fans will take issue with paying to see Haney on PPV because they don’t view him as worthy of pay-per-view due to his sometimes dull style of fighting, which involves a lot of clinching & jabbing and not much in the way of power.

For fans that want to see the 34-year-old Lomachenko in one of the biggest fights of his career, with him having lost a few stages due to age, they’ll have to pay for the privilege.

This is a David vs. Goliath type of match due to the massive welterweight-size of Haney against the tiny featherweight-sized Lomachenko. Haney should already be campaigning at 140, at the very least, and it’s entirely possible that he won’t make weight for the Loma fight, given how huge he’s looked since his last fight in October.

By the time Haney finishes rehydrating for the fight, he’ll resemble a junior middleweight, and Lomachenko is going to be up against it, outsized even more so than when he fought the hulking Teofimo Lopez in October 2020.

Mike Coppinger reports that Haney (29-0, 15 KOs) has agreed to face Lomachenko (17-2, 11 KOs) in May. They have a deal in place, but no contracts have been signed yet.

Haney, 24, had wanted the fight with Lomachenko to take place in March before the start of Ramadan, but Loma needed more time to prepare for the match after his last bout against Jamaine Ortiz on October 29th.

That fight showed that the former three-division world champion Lomachenko needed to build strength, conditioning, and size.

“The top fight at lightweight not involving Shakur Stevenson or Tank Davis for that matter is the one that we’ll likely get first, right? The undisputed lightweight champion of the world, Devin Haney. There’s only one lightweight champ. Forget about the belts, and he has them anyway, against former kingpin Vasyl Lomachenko,” said Max Kellerman on Max on Boxing.

“Everything seems on track now. They’re looking at May. Devin Haney wanted to go in March. He is Muslim, and Ramadan runs from mid-March to mid-April, but he has agreed to do that fight in May,” said Mike Coppinger.

I’m told a framework of a deal is in place for Haney vs. Lomachenko. So no contracts are signed yet, but all is looking good.”

“Give this to Haney. He waited for his shot and campaigned for it, he went on the road to get it, and he had the rematch there in overseas and did that,” said Kellerman about Haney twice fighting former lightweight unified champion George Kambosos Jr twice in Australia.

“Then, in his first fight back, he takes the best fight that can be made against the most dangerous guy, who will get in with him right away, Lomachenko,” said Kellerman.