Tim Bradley is picking underdog Regis Prograis to win in his fight tonight against Devin Haney. Indeed, Bradley feels Prograis (29-1, 24 KOs) will do the job to retain his WBC light welterweight title with an upset victory over Haney (30-0, 15 KOs), who he thinks lacks the technique to unseat the champion.
According to Bradley, Prograis has something to prove after his last fight, and he wants to show his doubters that he’s not washed and is still at the top of his game, ready to beat the 25-year-old upstart.
It could be the upset of the year tonight, and that would ruin things for Haney, who is already planning his next fight.
Tim feels that Prograis will have studied his last performance against Danielito Zorrilla and made improvements in the flaws he showed in that fight. He’ll come into tonight’s clash against Bradley, a retooled fighter, and will send Haney down to his first career defeat.
Haney vs. Prograis will battle tonight on DAZN PPV at the Chase Center in San Francisco, California.
Haney vs. Prograis = 50-50
“In my eyes, it’s 50-50. You’re only as good as your last opponent, so a lot of people are writing off Regis. You got to go back and look at Regis in what he was able to do early on, fights back, back and back,” said Tim Bradley to Fighthype about Regis Prograis being overlooked for his fight tonight against the oddsmakers favorite Devin Haney.
What Bradley isn’t saying is whether Prograis can win if the fight goes to the scorecards because judging came into play for Haney’s last fight against Vasily Lomachenko. Haney has these things going for him if the judges decide the outcome:
- Venue: Fight is in Haney’s hometown of San Francisco
- A-side: Devin is the more popular fighter
- DAZN backed
- Younger guy: The 25-year-old Haney has more of a future ahead of him than the 34-year-old Prograis, and that means a lot.
“He’s not one-dimensional. Regis has layers to his game. He can box, he can be elusive, he can make you miss. He can pressure, he can come forward, and he’s coming from a southpaw stance. That’s why I’m picking Prograis to win. I’m picking him to win this fight,” said Tim Bradley, predicting a victory for WBO light welterweight champion Prograis tonight against Haney.
“Everybody is going off that last performance [by Prograis against Danielito Zorrilla] because of footwork. In that last performance, Prograis’ footwork wasn’t there. It wasn’t on point. You’ve got to realize that you don’t think he’s going to learn from that.”
Prograis looked like he hadn’t trained for Zorrilla’s style in their fight last June, and didn’t know what to do with the running the Puerto Rican fighter was doing.
Regis only had three weeks to train for Zorrilla, and clearly wasn’t enough. For tonight’s clash, Prograis has had a long 13-week camp, so he should be more than ready for Haney’s jab, move & grab style.
“Come on, you don’t think he’s going to learn from that? You don’t think he’s working on cutting off the ring? He was following Zorrilla. You don’t think he’s been working on that to get ready for Devin? You can fix these holes in your game to fix them. I’m sure he’s been working for 13 weeks or something like that,” Bradley said about Prograis.
“So, you know he put in work. You know he analyzed his last performance and that’s what happens. When you have a bad performance, and you come back, it refuses you. You get back in the gym; you get back in your groove.”
The problems that Regis had against Zorrilla won’t be there tonight against Haney, considering he doesn’t possess nearly the same kind of punching power as him, and he won’t run nearly as much.
Zorrilla was literally running from Prograis the entire fight, making it nearly impossible to get to him. In the early rounds, Zorrilla was dangerous, as he was catching Prograis with big shots when he would try to trap him.
Haney will give Prograis issues with his tying up. If Prograis didn’t work on counteracting Haney’s holding, he would be in the same boat George Kambosos Jr. was in his two fights with him. Kambosos couldn’t do anything against Haney because he was getting held so often, and the referees in their two fights just let it go on without warning or penalizing Devin.
Prograis will be extra motivated for tonight’s fight, especially with everyone counting him out and seeing Haney as the sure-thing winner. He knows that he can’t afford to lose to Haney because if he gets beaten, it might be over for him.
It took Prograis three years to come back from his loss to Josh Taylor, and he doesn’t have the youth to wait another three years before he gets another opportunity if he gets beaten by Haney.
“You start having success; you stop doing what made you successful. But now you go back, and you do things like in the past that made you successful. You bring it back, and your focus is completely different. You locked in all the way,” said Bradley.
Devin’s technique is not great
“Regis is super focused. He put in the work,” Tim said. “He has the punching power that can hurt Devin. Devin ain’t ever tested the waters at 140. Punchers are born. Devin is not a puncher. ‘Will his power carry up with him?’ He never had power at 135. He’s not going to have power at 140 all of a sudden at five extra pounds.
“You’ve got to understand that you can improve your power with technique. Devin’s technique is not all that great. He’s not going to be able to improve his punching power just on weight alone. His technique has got to improve.”
There’s no way that Haney will make significant improvements in his punching power by going up five pounds from 135 to 140. It’s not this technique holding Haney back from being a puncher. He just isn’t built to be a power puncher.
As the saying goes, ‘Punchers are born, not made,’ and that’s absolutely true. Haney going up in weight won’t turn him into Julian Jackson. He will be the same weak fighter he’s always been and will need to depend on his boxing skills to win tonight.
“Devin wants to get the hell out of the way once he gets off. He wants to get the hell out of the way,” said Bradley. “If he improves his technique, he might hit a little bit harder, but he don’t. Devin, if you go back and watch his recent fights, Devin stands his ground.
“Standing your ground doesn’t mean you’re not boxing. It’s maintaining that space, maintaining that distance. Devin knows how to maintain space. He has a good step-back game. He can make a lot of Regis’ punches fall short. Regis has some short a** arms.
“Devin has the longer arms. He can keep him at bay. Just keep him occupied. Have him looking at something all the time, looking at the jab, breaking him up and down. Stabbing him here and stabbing him there. Devin is a tactician,” Tim said.
Regis will catch Haney
“If you take skill out of the whole equation, Devin knows how to win. That’s why he’s so good,” said Bradley. “He knows how to win. He’s not a technician. He’s a tactician, in my opinion. He knows when to tie up. He knows when to come forward and brawl. He knows when to box off the back foot.”
Haney jabs, and moves around, making it hard for his opponents to get in punching range. His long arms give him the advantage of being able to control at range.
What really helps Haney is that when his opponents do get in position to throw, he’ll dive forward and clinch if he can’t escape. Again, Prograis will need to deal with the holding if he’s to win tonight because he’s not going to be able to beat him in a boxing match.
“He knows what to do at the right moment. That’s why he’s so damn good,” said Bradley. “As far as Regis goes, he can move. Regis was boxing against [Josh] Taylor [in the second half of their 2019 fight after he made adjustments]. Go back and watch that fight towards the end when he was outboxing Taylor.
“He was stepping back off the backfoot, popping him, moving to the side, angling him, and countering Taylor. That was when he was having success. Where he messed up was he stayed too much in the middle [and on the inside], trying to pressure, trying to pressure, and trying to pressure, and Taylor was the better inside fighter than he was,” said Bradley.
Prograis spent the better part of the Josh Taylor fight foolishly battling him on the inside, and that was a bad idea. He wasn’t good enough to beat the two-time Olympian Taylor fighting in close, and it was strange that Prograis didn’t give up on the idea early to stop fighting him at close range. Was he not listening to his coach? When Prograis did take the fight to the outside, he dominated rounds nine through twelve.
“Taylor was able to bump him and get him on his heels and then work off with quick combinations,” said Bradley. “He can do a little bit of everything, too, Regis Prograis, but he’s got heavy a** hands. That’s the difference right there.
“Haney ain’t going to tell you that Lomachenko buzzed him. Lomachenko is little, and he’s a southpaw. Lomachenko buzzed him. Now, if Lomachenko was able to buzz him, what do you think Regis is going to be able to do? He’s going to catch him.”
Lomachenko definitely had Haney hurt in that fight, but he couldn’t finish him off. That was a fight that Haney would have lost if Lomachenko hadn’t taken the twelfth round off.
With Lomachenko’s amateur experience and high IQ, he should have known that he couldn’t afford to take the 12th round off, fighting an American in his hometown of Las Vegas and expecting to win. That a massive mistake.
“Haney is going to have to answer some questions when he gets caught. He’s either going to be there, like, ‘I’m going to take whatever.’ You go in these fights; you got to win. You got to figure out how to win these fights,” said Bradley.
If Haney gets hurt, it could be curtains for him because Prograis won’t allow him to clinch his way out of trouble as Devin did in his fight with Jorge Linares after he was badly stunned in the later rounds of that contest. Prograis will work a hand free and hammer Haney if he tries to hold after getting hurt.
