Devin Haney is not sitting by the phone. On the latest AKHi TV, the host reports that with the Shakur Stevenson chapter closed for good, Haney will defend his WBO championship on November 28 against the IBF champion, Liam Paro — a title unification, two belts, in what the host notes will be Haney’s first fight in Australia. He also reports the co-features are names that keep the card serious rather than decorative: Subriel Matías and Richardson Hitchins, both dangerous men.
That is what moving on looks like. And the host’s verdict on the man Haney moved on from is savage: “He need Devin more than Devin need him. Because Devin Haney got options. Shakur ain’t got nothing. He don’t got no promotion, he don’t got no network, he don’t got nobody to fight.” The warm-up praise comes first — Shakur is “dead game,” his punch placement is elite, he is expected to handle Muratalla — but the host says what boxing keeps proving: all the ability in the world does not pay like leverage does.
The money math is where AKHi really digs in. Eddie Hearn is looking to sign Shakur, the host says — but not at the price Shakur has been asking while describing himself as boxing’s biggest free agent. Shakur “is selling himself as a guy that only wants to make big fights,” and the host’s position is that the big fights have to be earned into existence: get the buzz up, bring the casuals in, do it the Oscar way, “like your man, Oscar De La Hoya, did” — through opponents who may not appear on paper as tests, but who will “push that PPV button.” You become big first, the host says. Then you go fight the big fights.
So the split screen writes itself. Haney, who per the host has fought ten champions, defends and unifies at 147 in November. Shakur chases a final eliminator and a signature. One of them is negotiating from a throne; the other, by AKHi’s telling, is still auditioning for one. November 28 will tell us which posture the sport rewards.
Video credit: AKHi TV.
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