It kind of sucks to be part of a love triangle…only to find out that you’re way on the outside, looking in, not even really a part of that triangle.
That’s the situation in which Devin Haney finds himself in the race to wrangle a bout with 4-belt (or 3-and-a-half belt?) lightweight champ George Kambosos Jr.
Kambosos, the 28-year-old Australian who shocked the world with an upset of Teofimo Lopez last November, has been the target of several high-end 135-pounders since his impressive win over the defending 4-belt (or 3-and-a-half belt) champ. The general feeling among boxing people is that Kambosos is a vulnerable low-risk/high-reward foe for many of the more talented fighters in the division. Former champ (who lost to Lopez) Vasiliy Lomachenko, Ryan Garcia, and WBC titlist Devin Haney have all, reportedly, come to Team Kambosos looking to put together a fight.
The problem for Haney, however, is that, despite being the most vocal about wanting the high-profile fight, he seems the least likely to actually get it.
Per Dan Rafael’s Twitter feed, referring to talks of a Kambosos bout:
“Loma fight is in discussion as is Garcia. Both are on the table. DAZN has no interest in the Haney fight.”
Up until drips and drabs of buzz-busting realism started surfacing in media reports, the 23-year-old Haney was thought to be the front-runner for a Kambosos fight…but only because Haney and his team kept telling us that.
Haney’s father and trainer/manager, Bill Haney, was especially aggressive in talking up this fight, to the point of sounding delusional with talks of swerving Kambosos’ plan to stage the fight in Australia in favor of full “football stadiums” in the US.
Promoter Eddie Hearn has also been talking up Kambosos-Haney as if it were close to happening, using his DAZN platform to push it as a DAZN mega-fight.
Fine…except, DAZN doesn’t seem all that interested. According to reports, the streaming service is much more interested in putting Ryan Garcia, who fights under their banner as part of their Golden Boy deal, into the slot opposite Kambosos and is pushing for that fight to happen as they kick off the pay-per-view branch of their service.
All of this spotlights just what’s wrong with the entire DAZN boxing effort. They just can’t make stars with their subscription-only business model. Walling-off their content and making almost zero effort to attract new fans to the sport pretty much guarantees that there will be zero growth and zero mainstream awareness for their fights and fighters.
Haney, who is young, talented, and had a stellar amateur pedigree, was one of DAZN’s first investments into star-making. They signed him up to a long-term contract at a future superstar’s rate (reportedly around $1 million per fight). Six fights into their star-building effort, however, they’ve not built him into anything resembling a draw.
Kambosos, who says he’s not “seen one offer with a dollar amount” from Team Haney, has been talking up a storm on social media, poking holes in Haney’s feelings of self-importance.
“The kids shit scared & his own broadcaster won’t back him because he ain’t bringing subscriptions,” Kambosos wrote on his verified Twitter account. “Cold hard truth. Poor kid did like 500 tickets in his last fight! No lie I was there. It was his own damn hometown too (laughing emoji). I did more in my pro debut at a local club. #embarrassing.”
Even DAZN gets it. That’s why they’re pushing for Ryan Garcia to get the Kambosos fight and not the young fighter they’ve invested more into. Garcia is not as accomplished as Haney and not as much of a polished fighter, but he’s an infinitely bigger draw. Kambosos-Garcia is a good matchup that could sell. Kambosos-Haney is a good matchup that would fall into a black hole.
The Australian’s other high-end option is Top Rank’s Vasiliy Lomachenko in a fight that would get ESPN love (and money) as either a main channel event or an ESPN pay-per-view show.
For Team Kambosos, a fight with the 23-year-old Garcia would probably be the more attractive option, though. Garcia, with a huge following on social media and YouTube, is one of the rarest of all breeds in boxing– a fighter with true crossover appeal who actually does bring some new eyeballs to the sport. He’s also very much a developing fighter and a work in progress, something which makes him a more beatable opponent than Lomachenko.
Garcia has just announced an April 9 return to the ring against Ghanaian Emmanuel Tagoe at the Alamodome in San Antonio. It’s worth noting that Tagoe is promoted by Lou DiBella, who also promotes Kambosos. Could a Tagoe fight with Garcia be tied to a Kambosos fight for Garcia next?
Who knows?
What we DO know is that, of all the possible big lightweight fights out there, Haney is probably not a player to be one-half of any of them.
Who didn’t see this coming for Haney, though? Who could’ve actually thought that sticking an unknown kid behind a permanent paywall with a fluctuating, but comparatively small subscriber base would lead to stardom? Haney got his million per fight (and who could call that a loss for a kid who was 20-years-old at the time of the signing?), so, he may walk away from all this a wealthy man, but he isn’t becoming a star anytime soon, not unless some major changes are made to the way his career is handled. And that lack of stardom means that he’ll never get the major fights he craves.
For now, this is George Kambosos’ world and he gets to call the shots. Kudos to him. Hopefully, he gets a few big money scores out of this run and puts together a nice nest egg. We should all know soon enough which non-Haney fight he’ll be taking next.