There’s fight-week sniping, heaps of pride on the line and the fate of the welterweight division hanging in the balance.
The high stakes of the dead-even-odds match that is Saturday’s Brian Norman Jnr-Devin Haney fight have seemed to escalate each day, as the fighters’ father-trainers, Bill Haney and Brian Norman Snr, got into it at Thursday’s news conference.
It sets the stage for the meeting of the unbeaten sons, with 24-year-old WBO welterweight titleholder Norman, 28-0 (22 KOs), hoping to replicate the power-punching displays that have defined the past year of his career against a former two-division champion in Haney, 32-0 (15 KOs), perhaps still shaken by the three knockdowns he suffered in last year’s no-contest versus PED-positive Ryan Garcia.
“When it’s genuine, the competitive edge of the fight means so much more – it means the savage mentality is there,” ProBoxTV analyst and former welterweight titlist Paulie Malignaggi said on Thursday’s episode of “BoxingScene Today.” “These two guys have a lot to prove, and there’s a lot still in front of them.”
Malignaggi said it’s why he and fight fans are so passionate about not letting fights like this marinate too long.
“They’re fighting for the creation of a legacy,” Malignaggi said.
For Norman, the question is whether his elevation to champion through victories over Giovanni Santillan, Derrieck Cuevas and Jin Sasaki has made him a worthy titlist.
“Before the Santillan fight, Norman hadn’t proved anything,” Malignaggi said. “It was not championship-caliber competition.”
For Haney, his cautious showing in Times Square in May versus former unified 140lbs champion Jose Ramirez keeps alive the notion he has PTSD from the Garcia “shellacking,” as host Jimmy Smith called it.
“The mental part stays with you,” Malignaggi said. “They shouldn’t show the highlight reel of that fight, because it doesn’t count, but Devin Haney has to still prove that fight hasn’t stayed with him. The Ramirez fight didn’t prove anything.
“Does Haney have it still, or has it been beaten out of him?”
Smith asked if that indicates the heavy-handed Norman will swing for a stoppage?
“It might be something to keep in mind, but if he throws too many shots and Devin Haney starts clipping him with counters … if they’re not landing, let the fight develop,” Malignaggi advised.
Malignaggi said he believes Haney got lazy against Garcia because the latter had been acting so erratically and then missed weight before their April 2024 bout.
“I think [getting blasted by hooks] is a lesson learned,” Malignaggi said. “Haney knows to never make that mistake again.”
Whoever wins, he said, stands as the class of a revived division that will likely gain a Garcia WBC title fight against Mario Barrios in February, while Conor Benn is coming down to the weight and belt holder Rolando “Rolly” Romero might be fighting Manny Pacquiao.
“You’ve got a little bit of everything,” Malignaggi said. “This weight class is starting to live up to the way it’s supposed to be. Things are shifting in a good way.”
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.
