Three cheers: Full approval for actions of Devin Haney, David Benavidez and Tim Tszyu

There’s too damned much negativity in boxing columns. (Thank goodness you’ll never find a critical word said in any of mine.) So in this particular piece, I’m defying convention and propagating positivity. Three active boxers have caught my eye recently with the way they’ve conducted themselves and the decisions they’ve made, and I’m going to heap praise upon them.

(But be forewarned that I may graze some other boxers with negative shrapnel along the way. There are limits to one’s ability to exclusively spread sunshine and rainbows while covering this sport.)

I now heartily extend two thumbs all the way up for these three warriors:

Devin Haney

Many a boxer over the years has balled up his fists and described one as the judge and the other as the jury. This is a sport where athletes have the opportunity to settle business in the most old-fashioned of ways, where legal teams don’t need to be called in if left hooks can get the job done.

But Haney has gone the litigation route. He has sued Ryan Garcia for battery, fraud, and unjust enrichment.

It’s not the most “boxer-ly” thing to do. But it is entirely warranted and appropriate.

Nobody but Garcia knows his intent. He tested positive for Ostarine, and it’s not inconceivable that it got into his system without his knowledge. All we can say for sure is that he had a banned performance-enhancing drug in his system and he put a physical beating on Haney.

Boxers sign up for a form of battery, but within a certain framework of rules. Once those rules are breached, it is not the risk of battery they agreed to.

Haney is doing the right thing by taking legal action against Garcia — not just for himself, but for all of boxing. If we want to ever rid this sport of PEDs, the punishment for taking them has to go beyond a fine and a suspension.

Granted, this is a civil lawsuit, not a criminal suit. Garcia is not going to do jailtime even if found guilty. But Haney is pursuing consequences beyond the relative slap on the wrist every boxer who’s ever tested positive has received. It makes a statement merely to accuse Garcia of battery and fraud, and to open the door for him to be found liable. Maybe, just maybe, by pursuing legal recourse, Haney will discourage some other boxer down the road from opting to give himself or herself that most dangerous of unfair advantages.

The worst possible scandal the sport of boxing could ever confront would be if a ring fatality occurred and the winning fighter was found to have been on PEDs. Garcia — whether intentionally or not — flirted with that on April 20.

The world saw the way Haney reacted to his punches throughout the fight. He was hurt in the opening round. He was dropped in the seventh, 10th, and 11th rounds.

What part of the effect of Garcia’s punches owes to artificial enhancement? It’s impossible to say. Just as it’s impossible to say how much him blowing off the agreed-upon weight limit and buying a size advantage was a factor. There is no handy-dandy pie chart to break down what segments of Garcia’s success were due to legitimate factors and what segments were due to it not being a fair fight.

By the same token, when Haney’s father, Bill, told BoxingScene last week that the filing of the lawsuit “is all for the good of the sport,” we can’t quantify how true that is. Presumably, there are some selfish motivations at play here alongside any possibly altruistic ones.

Regardless, it was the right thing to do. Devin Haney is not satisfied with merely getting the loss erased from his record — nor should he be.

David Benavidez

If Saul “Canelo” Alvarez wants to keep finding excuses not to take on Benavidez, that’s his prerogative. And it’s Benavidez’s prerogative to shame Canelo for that.

He’s gone as far as he could in terms of verbal shaming. Now he’s taking the next step: shaming Canelo by example.

By making a fight offer to David Morrell, Benavidez is giving the most dangerous opponent one rung below him on the star scale precisely what Alvarez refuses to give Benavidez: an opportunity. The contrast speaks for itself. Benavidez is more deserving than any other fighter of a shot at Canelo … and Alvarez put his hand on the hot door and walked away. Morrell is more deserving than any other fighter of a shot at Benavidez … and Benavidez turned the knob and walked into the burning building.

We haven’t seen the offer sheet and the terms therein, so we can’t say for sure how serious and fair an offer it is. But, assuming it’s a legit offer that reflects an actual desire to make the fight, Benavidez is doing right by boxing fans — and potentially doing right by himself long-term. If he beats Morrell, he will have done at light heavyweight what he did at super middleweight, making himself the unofficial mandatory challenger to the lineal champ.

And that means whoever wins the Artur Beterbiev-Dmitry Bivol fight can either defend against Benavidez soon thereafter or be branded a Canelo. (As great as Canelo is, in this case, that’s not a compliment.)

Benavidez is behaving as we wish all boxers would behave. He’s putting the zero on his record at risk and giving someone lower on the food chain a chance. He knows what it’s like to be on the opposite side of this dynamic and get snubbed. So he’s doing unto others as he’d have done to him, rather than as he has had done to him. That deserves to be celebrated.

Tim Tszyu

This is partially a retroactive heaping of praise, dating back to March, when Tszyu could have taken the easy way out of a fight with a no-contest, only to instead fight on and take his first “L.” But it’s timely some six months later because last week, on a media conference call, Tszyu doubled down on his decision to go down swinging (and bleeding) against Sebastian Fundora rather than make the prudent choice.

“For me it was: If you’re going to lose, you’re going to lose that way,” Tszyu said on the call. “I’m not going to try and survive. I was there to win, and the only way to win for me was trying to smash my opponent. To just pull out and forfeit, that’s not my thing. It’s not in my blood. I’d rather die in that ring. That’s the mentality I’ve got.”

Yeah, we know. This is a guy who was in a mandatory position to challenge Jermell Charlo and, instead of sitting on the ranking, fought three times in 2023 while waiting for Charlo, with two of the three opponents extremely dangerous on paper (Tony Harrison and Brian Mendoza). And after he lost his perfect record against Fundora thanks to Paul Bunyan dropping his axe on Tszyu’s head, the Aussie immediately signed to fight Vergil Ortiz Jr. (a bout called off because the canyon in his cranium wasn’t healed in time)

Tszyu is the ultimate anyone-anytime-anywhere guy, and if, while looking like Carrie on prom night, he should lose a close fight that he could have wriggled out of before the end of the fourth round, hey, no regrets. He wouldn’t change a thing.

Boxing needs more Tszyus. It needs more Benavidezes. It needs more Haneys (even if some of the many tough guys who reside on the internet would dispute that last one).

Are any of them as heroic as Eddie Hearn, who over the weekend proposed starting all main events at 9 p.m. local time? Probably not (unless Haney, Benavidez, or Tszyu pulled the “seven-minute abs” move and suggested an 8pm start time for main events).

Still, all three have my respect and admiration. They’ve made decisions that can benefit the sport of boxing and its fans. Hopefully, despite the risk involved, these three fighters will each share in that benefit as well in the end.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, Ringside Seat, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X or LinkedIn, or via email at [email protected].