Devin Haney and Regis Prograis are now set to meet on Dec. 9 in San Francisco at the Chase Center, ESPN.com’s Mike Coppinger reports today.
The bout, which will be for Prograis’ WBC title at 140 lbs, will be a DAZN pay-per-view main event. If your reaction is that it won’t sell a ton, that is likely true, but it seems pretty clear at this point that things don’t have to be smash hits on pay-per-view to be worth running pay-per-view, because people keep doing it.
Haney (30-0, 15 KO) will be coming up from lightweight, where he was undisputed champion, and last fought on May 20, winning a controversial decision over Vasiliy Lomachenko.
Haney, 24, has been expected to move up to 140, and a fight with Prograis (29-1, 24 KO) was first expected to come on Oct. 28, but there were pretty normal complications and whatnot that kept getting headlines because Prograis kept bringing it up.
But we will get the fight, it appears, which is no big shock. The 34-year-old Prograis is signed to Matchroom Boxing, and Matchroom and DAZN clearly wanted this fight, not so much Prograis’ other ideas, including trying to work with Don King and make a fight with a terribly unreliable Adrien Broner.
Prograis was last in action on June 17, winning a dull decision over Danielito Zorrilla to retain his WBC belt, which Prograis won last November against Jose Zepeda.
Matchup-wise, this one seems really intriguing to me. Prograis is better than the Zorrilla fight made him look, and with his power and somewhat awkward style, he could be a rough outing for the conventionally excellent and very technically sound Haney, but that could go the other way, too. Haney doesn’t make a lot of mistakes, and if he can get the fight he wants, Prograis could have a hell of a tough time with him.
As soon as this is fully official, we may also see Haney’s WBA, IBF, and WBO titles shake loose. He’s already “champion in recess” with the WBC, and Shakur Stevenson and Frank Martin are set to fight for that vacant belt. Gervonta “Tank” Davis would just become the recognized WBA titleholder, and then the IBF and WBO titles will go where they go.