Mickey Bey did not come on MillCity Boxing to disrespect Liam Paro. He came to bury him politely. Paro, Bey said, is tough — a champion again, a two-time, two-weight-division champion, a warrior who used to fly in from Australia and spar everybody in Las Vegas, including Haney himself. They are not overlooking him. “We still gonna destroy him.”
The prediction, when the host pressed him on beating Paro better than Richardson Hitchins did — Hitchins only got a split decision — was specific: Paro’s corner throws the towel in. Paro will want to keep going, Bey said, but he will be battered, and his corner will hug him and tell him they had to do it. And when the host asked if it would at least be hard work, Bey corrected him: “Oh, it’s going to be easy work.”
The confidence has a structure behind it. The trio — Bey, Devin and Bill Haney — is back together, in its second fight back, at the right weight: comfortable at 147, where Brian Norman Jr. was, in Bey’s words, the appetizer who got lucky to hear the final bell. Bey says he has never seen Devin lose a sparring session, and that the confidence comes from the work, not the talk: Haney doesn’t cut corners. The layoff — about 13 months by the time they fight in December — doesn’t worry him either. They were supposed to fight in May before Rolly Romero fell through, and had Keyshawn Davis lined up for October. They stayed ready.
Then MillCity asked the question everybody asks: what actually went wrong with Shakur Stevenson? Haney’s team had even been training for Shakur — a southpaw, same as Paro — before that fight died. Bey said he gave Shakur the benefit of the doubt, but landed here: “I just don’t think he want to fight.” The Haney side agreed to fight, Bey said. Shakur either didn’t want it or wanted to wait. Bey named no winner for a Haney-Shakur fight — he didn’t have to. It’s the same story the Haney family has told from every angle: they sign up, the other side finds a reason. Paro signed. December will tell us if Bey’s towel prediction was talk — Bey is betting it wasn’t.
Video credit: MillCity Boxing.
