Devin Haney moving up to fight Regis Prograis for WBC 140 title

Devin Haney will reportedly move up to 140 to fight WBC titlist Regis Prograis, Mike Coppinger reports at ESPN.com, though Haney is not necessarily looking to vacate his undisputed lightweight championship.

The report claims that Haney (30-0, 15 KO) “hopes to keep his lightweight belts,” then decide what weight class to fight in after the bout with Prograis (29-1, 24 KO) on Oct. 28.

The WBO recently gave Haney, 24, a deadline to decide what weight he’ll fight at next, and thus what to do with their title situation, and the WBC basically did the same, with Haney picking between a 135 title defense against Shakur Stevenson, or a move up to 140 to fight Prograis.

The move for Haney to go up for the Prograis fight had been increasingly expected over the last week.

This could all work out the way Haney wants, though, as the WBC or WBO could do interim title fights with Haney taking a bout at 140. This has been a situation that’s happened many time in boxing history, and the sanctioning bodies are usually pretty happy to find some way to take multiple cuts of multiple fighters’ purses in their noble quest to reward everyone with a trinket.

The move would mark Haney returning to Matchroom Boxing and DAZN, both of whom need star power in a big way. Haney fought with Matchroom on DAZN for several bouts, being paid very handsomely — many would argue far more handsomely than the fights were actually worth, but that’s boxing — until making the jump to Top Rank to do a three-fight deal in 2022.

Those fights wound up being two with George Kambosos Jr in Australia, the first of which saw Haney fully unify the lightweight division and in the rematch defend that crown, and then his May 20 win over Vasiliy Lomachenko, which was hotly disputed, with many calls for a rematch that were never going to come to fruition.

Prograis, 34, recently signed a multiple-fight deal with Matchroom, which he got going on June 17 in New Orleans, a clear but unusually unimpressive and dull victory over Danielito Zorrilla to retain the WBC belt he won last year against Jose Zepeda.