Promoter Oscar De La Hoya says Devin Haney wanted to “test the waters” against Jose Ramirez before facing Ryan Garcia in a rematch on May 2nd because he was “knocked out” in their previous fight on April 20th.

Although technically Haney (31-0, 15 KOs) lost to Ryan by a 12-round majority decision, De La Hoya views it as a knockout.

Rematch Avoidance

Haney could live to regret taking the fight with Ramirez rather than going straight into the rematch with Ryan. Ramirez is still fighting near the level he was at earlier in his career, and his power is still there. While he did lose his last fight to Arnold Barboza Jr., the fight was a narrow 10-round decision. De La Hoya says Haney is going to find out the hard way that Ramirez is still “dangerous,” and this fight will be a disaster for him.

Haney is making his comeback from that defeat against the still dangerous former WBC and WBO light welterweight champion Ramirez (29-2, 18 KOs) on the Ryan Garcia vs. Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero undercard on Turki Alalshikh’s Fatal Fury event on May 2nd on Times Square in New York City. The event will be shown live on DAZN PPV.

One reason might be the way the referee Harvey Dock stopped the action in the seventh round to penalize Garcia a point without warning for hitting on the break. That was an oddity, and the referee didn’t take a point for his excessive holding. It looked to some like the referee had singlehandedly saved Haney from a sure knockout defeat.

The whole thing seemed very weird. You could tell that without the ref stopping the action to penalize Garcia, he would have finished off Haney, who was out on his feet after being dropped.

“Knocked Out”?

“Devin Haney doesn’t want to come back against Ryan Garcia after being knocked out,” said Golden Boy promoter Oscar De La Hoya to DAZN Boxing when asked why we’re not seeing Ryan Garcia vs. Devin Haney 2 on May 2nd. “It’s not in the manual book of promoting fights or it’s not in the fighter’s manual book where after you get knocked out, you fight the same guy again.

“You have to have an in-between fight to get your confidence back for Devin to make sure he’s okay. What if [Jose] Ramirez pops him with a shot and he gets wobbled and he gets knocked out? That can happen,” said De La Hoya.

“That would be a disaster,” said Ariel Helwani.

“I think Devin wanted to test the waters against Ramirez, thinking that Ramirez is not dangerous, but guess what? He is dangerous,” said a smiling De La Hoya.

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