The father/trainer/promoter of Devin Haney, Bill, just recently joined Ariel Helwani to discuss his son’s recent title win over Brian Norman Jr, why it was such an impressive performance, and a lot more during this segment. If I’m being honest, Bill rambled a lot more nonsense than I’m accustomed to hearing from him so I’ve tried my best to highlight some of his talking points in a more digestible format.
Bill Haney on Devin’s aspirations at 147
“…Rolly Romero, where did he go and what was he talking? Listen, I’ve been to every buffet, every smorgasbord, and I know he’s lurking, sitting around there, because if he was hungry and he was really the fighter that I know Rolly Romero to be, he would be stepping up to this opportunity to unifying the division.
“We want The Ring belt…We should’ve gotten it after we beat Brian Norman with that performance and everybody was scared and they was quiet and they had bet against Dev. And guess what? Now, they’re even more quiet.”
On what he made of Devin’s performance against Norman
“We would’ve stopped him, we would’ve laid him out, we would’ve applied even more pressure but when he was on his back and Devin stood over him, I thought you guys would’ve been happy with that…
“Now, who was doing the grabbing? If you go back and look at the film it was Brian Norman that was doing the grabbing and it was Devin that we kept yelling ‘chip away, champ.’…Where was the urgency [from Norman]? We know we had administered the maximum punishment, put him down, we had took away the fight in him and his dad was asking for something that he couldn’t do.
“But no different from him, no different from Lomachenko — in the 12th round what’s happening, what’s going on? We beating the will out of ‘em…”
On where the relationship soured between them and Eddie Hearn
“There’s nothing going wrong…whatever that he’s talking about I’m sure we can settle it with our fighters in the ring and make for a great event. But when he starts down-talking, he starts saying all the wrong talking points to get the [casuals to believe it’s a snoozefest], all these other things — come on, man. Be honest to the people. What you witnessed was a masterclass performance. You saw a technician disarm a puncher, a athletic and determined puncher, and we handicapped him.”
On what he wants to see Devin do next
“The one thing that you do as a champion, you give the other champions the opportunity to unify, in a perfect world…”
On the WBC shamelessly allowing Ryan Garcia fight Mario Barrios for their welterweight world title
“Why would we be concerned about the losers’ bracket?…Give us the winner, Rolly Romero. Tell him to stop hiding like he’s waiting on some money from Pacquiao, and he’s trying to do a fight with Pacquiao. It’s not happening. Listen, you don’t draw enough, you don’t bring enough to the table for Pacquiao.”
