SAN FRANCISCO – When Devin Haney ran into Ryan Garcia while shopping in the Los Angeles area a few months ago, Garcia didn’t mention the possibility of them fighting.

Haney wasn’t the least bit surprised, though, that Garcia took to social media to call him out in the immediate aftermath of Haney’s dominant win against Regis Prograis. The 25-year-old rivals have talked about fighting each other for years and Haney acknowledged that facing Garcia would be a serious consideration for his first fight of 2024.

“I think that’s a possibility,” Haney said during his post-fight press conference. “That’s a mega-fight. You know, I been calling out Ryan for years now, so it’s good to hear that, you know, he finally wanna fight. It sucks that it came after, you know, he took a ‘L,’ but it was only a matter of time.

“But now he finally wanna, you know, call me out. But at the end of the day, it’s still a big fight and like I said, I’m willing to make the … I wanna make the best fights, biggest fights happen.”

Haney (31-0, 15 KOs) also mentioned the possibility of facing WBO junior welterweight champ Teofimo Lopez (19-1, 13 KOs) in a title unification fight and moving up to the welterweight division for at least one bout. Bill Haney, Devin’s father/trainer, asked promoter Eddie Hearn if what would be a lucrative showdown with Garcia (24-1, 20 KOs) is a realistic possibility.

“I mean, it’s come from Oscar, which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s real,” Hearn said in reference to Oscar De La Hoya, Garcia’s promoter. “But Ryan said so as well. But listen, that’s a great fight. You know, I think Ryan should be chasing the champions at 140. He should be chasing the number one in the division. And Devin’s the number one in the division, so you know, I do think looking back, I think people don’t quite understand what Devin used to do to make 135. When I used to work with him, before he had to go over to the other side and rob the bank, he was done at 135. And he went on to have three more fights at 135. Two of them was traveling to the other side of the world [Australia] to make weight [for wins against George Kambosos], which I think is an incredible achievement.

“And he’s right – there is no way he could’ve fulfilled the potential he had as a fighter at 135. And I think for years and years we chased a Ryan Garcia fight. No one wanted to fight Devin Haney. And everyone used the excuse – when you’ve got a really good fighter, everyone uses the excuse, ‘Oh, they just don’t sell. It’s not a big enough fight. No one knows who he is.’ But he’s actually gone to Australia, become undisputed, come back, you know, those fights that he had, beat Lomachenko. Now he’s sold out in a city that hasn’t had boxing for two decades. Who else can do that in boxing?”

Haney enhanced his reputation as an elite-level pound-for-pound performer by beating the powerful Prograis with such ease in their DAZN Pay-Per-View main event.

The Oakland native dropped Prograis with a right hand during the third round, completely controlled the action thereafter and limited Prograis to unofficially landing only 38 total punches, a record low for 12-round title fights tracked by CompuBox. Judges Rey Danesco, Mike Ross and Fernando Villarreal all scored their bout a shutout, 120-107 apiece, for Haney.

Garcia knocked out Oscar Duarte in the eighth round the previous Saturday night at Toyota Center in Houston. The Victorville, California native wasn’t nearly as impressive overall versus Mexico’s Duarte (26-2-1, 21 KOs) as Haney was against Prograis (29-2, 24 KOs), but he responded positively from his first professional defeat by winning his first fight with new trainer Derrick James in his corner.

Gervonta Davis (29-0, 27 KOs) knocked out Garcia in the seventh round of Garcia’s previous fight April 22 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.