Coach Dorset has heard the $6 million story. He is calling it what he thinks it is: a lie.
On MillCity Boxing, Keyshawn Davis’s coach started by reading Richardson Hitchins’s own post back — the one where Hitchins says he agreed to this fight going on two months ago, asks what the hold-up is, and claims Davis asked for six million to fight him despite never having made a million in boxing. Dorset’s answer came in two parts. First: Davis did make a million — in the Jamaine Ortiz fight. Second: look at who is actually making offers here. Hitchins signed with Zuffa. Zuffa is his company. They are the ones coming to Keyshawn with offers — not the other way around. “Right now, we’re free agents,” Dorset said.
Video credit: MillCity Boxing.
“All the numbers come from the opposite side”
That, Dorset argued, is the pattern nobody is supposed to notice. His camp does not talk finances in public. They have never said what they were offered or what they turned down. Yet every time a fight falls through, a number appears — six million, three million, five million — and, in his telling, every one of those figures came from the opposite side. Take them with a grain of salt, he said, until you hear a number from Keyshawn’s side — because you have not yet.
His name for the strategy: Hitchins is taking a page out of Bill Haney’s playbook, shifting the narrative about who is not taking the fight. And his rule for spotting a fighter who does not want one is simple — when someone does not really want a fight, they go to social media and talk about negotiations. If they really wanted it, they would stay quiet and make it happen. As far as Dorset knows, December is still the date, and that is why the camp is in Las Vegas getting ready.
Haney was the easier fight
Buried in the money talk was a scouting report. Dorset said he has said it before and stands on it: Devin Haney was an easier fight for Keyshawn than Richardson Hitchins is. He would personally love Davis to take the Haney fight and beat him. Hitchins is a great trash talker, he allowed, but Haney is the more accomplished fighter — and stylistically, in Dorset’s eyes, both fights are a cakewalk for his man, with Haney the easier of the two.
Nobody releases their biggest star for free
Dorset also refused to swallow the tidy version of the Top Rank exit. Promoters do not let go of their biggest star just because he asked, he argued — fighters in hard negotiations normally get shelved, their careers paused, but nobody pauses one of their biggest attractions. A promoter in that spot tries to negotiate an extension, sells the fighter on re-signing, or takes the biggest payday before he walks. This is a fighter Arum himself, per Dorset, once said could be the number-one pound-for-pound attraction in the world: social media, the camera, the interviews, the entertainment in the ring. Fifteen fights in, a total package.
So here is where the saga actually stands, stripped of the numbers nobody will own: Zuffa wants its fighter, Hitchins, in a big fight. Keyshawn Davis is a free agent in camp for December. And the loudest claims about the money — all of them, Dorset says — are coming from exactly one side of the table.
Video credit: MillCity Boxing.
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