Keyshawn Davis claims he would knock out Devin Haney if given a chance to fight the former two-division world champion. Davis (11-0, 7 KOs) says Haney lacks the power to make him respect what he brings and couldn’t hold him off from attacking.
Keyshawn’s punching power and the Crawford-esque fighting style would be a nightmare for Haney if he couldn’t keep him off with clinching, jabbing, and movement. Some see Keyshawn as the next Crawford and as destined for greatness in the sport. Top Rank feels that way because they’re putting him in headliners and matching him well to ensure he doesn’t get beaten.
Keyshawn, the 2020 Olympic silver medalist, feels that much of Haney’s success during his career was due to him being bigger than his opposition at 135 and 140. In many of the fights, Haney looked enormous inside the ring after rehydrating and looked like he didn’t belong against his smallish opponents. Unfortunately, that’s how the sport is played now.
Younger fighters, who are able to melt down huge amounts of water weight, choose to fight in divisions well below their frames. They then somehow find a way to regain 20+ lbs of water rapidly. Who knows how they do it, but obviously, there are ways to game the system.
Until boxing fixes this problem by making secondary weight-ins mandatory on the day of the fight, we’ll continue to see this kind of thing.
The Top Rank-promoted lightweight contender Keyshawn would need to move up to welterweight to fight Haney because that’s where he’s heading.
Much of the shine on Haney’s career has come off after his loss to Ryan Garcia last April, and he’s no longer receiving the red carpet treatment he once had received. It’s like Haney is no longer one of the royalty is just a a regular peasant working the land and paying the taxes to the King. That loss to Ryan really did something to Haney’s standing and the way he’s treated now.
We saw that last weekend when Haney was bickering with promoter Eddie Hearn over tickets for the Anthony Joshua vs. Daniel Dubois event at Wembley Stadium. Would that have happened if Haney had beaten Ryan last April? That’s a big no. Haney would be part of the in-crowd, the celebrity superstar, who would have been given first class treatment.
“I feel like me and Devin Haney would be an easy fight for me. It would be super easy, and I know I would stop Devin Haney,” said Keyshawn Davis to Top Rank Boxing, trashing former two-division world champion Haney. “I’ve been saying this before the Ryan fight. He just don’t got nothing for me.”
If there was a way for Keyshawn to move up to welterweight without losing the power that he’s shown at 135, it would be interesting to see him and Haney battle it out. It doesn’t seem possible given the weight classes, and network issues that stand in the way of this fight being made.
“You don’t got no power. You got nothing for me to worry about,” said Keyshawn about Haney. “What are you going to do to stop me? With what I got coming with, I don’t feel like he’s got nothing to stop me. His defense is not that good. I feel like I got better defense than him.
“I know he’s fought better opponents than me. So, I give him the benefit of the doubt, but I just feel like I got better defense than him. Yeah, it is, but you got to realize he fought a lot of guys that were smaller than him, too,” Keyshawn said, reacting to being told that Haney’s resume is ‘Tough.’
“A lot of the guys were smaller than him. He was saying at the weigh-in, ‘You’re too small.’ So, he knew what he was doing, bro. Everybody has got that process for getting there. I’m not knocking what he’s doing,” said Davis.
Haney’s different promoters did a bang-up job of matching him during his career, but all good things must end. It fell apart when he finally met his match against Ryan Garcia, and he now looks like yesterday’s news. It may not be possible to rebuild Haney because he’s mentally shaken and can no longer meltdown to fight in weight classes below his enormous junior middleweight frame. The jig is up.
“His guys are smarter than him, and it was easy for him to get out of the way. When you’re taller than somebody, more rangy, it’s easy to get out of the way and just dodge stuff and keep them on the outside, which is his game. The size means something, bro. I just feel like he can’t do [anything] with me,” said Keyshawn.
Until Haney’s last fight against Ryan Garcia on April 20th, he’d been bigger than all his opponents, giving him a tremendous advantage. However, he looked mortal against Ryan and was beaten up badly by him. Since that fight, Haney has had the look of an ex-war vet who isn’t the same mentally after witnessing the horrors of countless battles. That fight took something out of Haney that he can’t forget.
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