Devin Haney was bent out of shape today about his $400K fine from the commission over his shove of Vasyl Lomachenko in addition to the appeal his manager Egis Klimas is making to the IBF, WBA, WBC & WBO to get a rematch.
The 24-year-old Haney says he wants the Commission to give back his $400K for his shoving of the challenger Lomachenko. The fine is a drop in the bucket for the dough Haney is making for the fight, as he had a guaranteed purse of $4 million. That’s not counting the PPV upside he’s getting, and that could be considerably more.
Haney says that Lomachenko is a “sore loser” and that he should be “out of boxing” for complaining about the results of their fight last Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
Lomachenko (17-3, 11 KOs) feels he did enough to win the fight, and he’s furious about the way the contest was scored by the three judges, who gave it to the four-belt lightweight champion Haney (30-0, 15 KOs) by the scores: 116-112, 115-113 and 115-113.
As far as the $400,000 fine by the Nevada State Athletic Commission goes, that was because of the hard push that Haney did during his face-off with Lomachenko, which appeared to some to be a deliberate act on his part.
The shove by Haney was hard enough to whiplash Lomachenko’s head, looking like he’d been in a car accident. It was risky for Haney to do because if Lomachenko had been injured, the fight would have been called off, and he would have been in hot water.
In the last couple of years, the occurrences of fighters pushing each other during their face-offs seem to have increased, and some believe they use these moves to increase ticket sales and PPV buys. It’s risky because of the potential for injuries.
If the sanctioning bodies make Lomachenko the mandatory for som or all of Haney’s four belts, he must decide whether to give him the rematch or vacate. If Haney vacates, Lomachenko will fight the highest-ranked contender for the strap.
Haney probably won’t give Lomachenko a rematch, even though the boxing world wants to see them fight again, and it would make a lot of money for both guys.
Devin has decided that he wants to fight Gervonta Davis next, and if he can’t get a fight against him, he’ll likely move up to 140 and go after one of the titles in that weight class.
