Devin Haney vs. Jorge Linares Staff Picks
Photo by Jack Thomas/Getty Images
After defeating the experienced Cuban Yuriorkis Gamboa by unanimous decision on November 7, 2020, the WBC Lightweight champion Devin Haney called out the unified lightweight champion Teófimo López, whose latest victory came by way of unanimous decision over the P4P virtuoso Vasyl Lomachenko in a thrilling show of craft and technique. However, while López seemed to reciprocate the desire to fight, he has now been tied up by the mandatory IBF title defense against George Kambosos Jr which is scheduled for June 19, 2021.
Now, after a whole year of starts and stops, Devin Haney squares up against Jorge Linares this Saturday on May 29 at the Michelob Ultra Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Should he win, the bout will mark Haney’s third succesful WBC lightweight title defense.
The Fight Site’s boxing team offers their thoughts and predictions on how the fight will go.
Lukasz Fenrych: Jorge Linares is an aging, past-his-best version of a fighter who even on his best day was, though sometimes beautiful to watch, flawed and frustrating. Devin is a fast, well-rounded boxer on the rise, seeing championships in his future. He'd be forgiven for thinking he could email in a performance and claim an easy victory, and, well, he should win fairly wide in the end, but there are a couple of reasons to believe it won't be a walk in the park, especially should Haney turn up unprepared.
The first thing to remember is that while Linares is not known for having a super-strong chin, what normally happens when he gets hurt is that his shoddy footwork sees opponents able to time him as he leaps in, and compound the power with his own momentum. Haney can hurt opponents, but that usually happens when he steps in and sits down on his shots, and faced with aggression, he usually taps with no real power and moves away. That was on full display in his easy-but-underwhelming display against the even older and much smaller Yuriorkis Gamboa, and it will likely be in play here.
The second thing is that, when he's overcome the flaws in his footwork to get into position, there aren't too many fighters with combinations to rival Linares' ability to flow from one punch to the next, and certainly no-one Haney's faced so far. Haney is defensively skilled and well-rounded, but he does tend to fight in a stance that leaves him looking just slightly out of shape quite a lot of the time. To date, he's been fast enough and had enough by way of combined layers of footwork and upper-body movement to not have been taken advantage of, but if he's not careful Linares could have the opportunity to chase him with combinations and leaving him have to reset at distance rather than counter in close.
Ultimately, Linares's footwork won't leave him in position to follow this up often enough to win the fight, especially since his defence is also very open so Haney won't have to search for openings even if he doesn't opt for power. So what we will most likely get is Haney winning a wide decision but finding himself in spots of trouble throughout on those occasions Linares can close in.
Mateusz Fenrych: So, this is going to be something of a litmus test for Haney. He’s young, fresh, passes the eye-test with ease… but, well, his resumé just leaves a little to be desired. The fact that he was gifted a belt means less when he won the next fight defending it.
It’s just that he hasn’t exactly been fighting a murderer’s row for it.
His last fight, also against an ageing veteran, also doesn’t inspire huge confidence; against an undersized but, er, ‘puffed-up’ Yuriorkis Gamboa, Haney never looked like finishing a fight that he was always in control of.
Now, that may seem like damning with faint praise, but not finishing off a fading vet, whether through lack of a finishing instinct or lack of power, doesn’t exactly promise much for when he does face an actual top-tier contemporary.
Now, Linares is going to be a good, challenging step up because, firstly, he has obvious flaws that Haney, if he is to be good enough to place himself amongst the elite, should be able to exploit, while secondly, still possessing enough fire to threaten should Haney not bring his A-game.
Against Gamboa, Haney had something of an easy ride because it wasn’t long into the fight it was clear that the Cuban Olympic gold medallist had little to threaten him with, either in speed, movement, or (seemingly) desire to win.
Linares on the other hand, still retains some pop, and is not far removed from his pomp; remember it was only two years ago he was defending a belt from the mighty Lomachenko, who was floored for the first time in his pro career by the Venezuelan.
One thing to note, as a danger for Haney, too, is Linares’ speed. Haney is a good athlete and a smooth mover but he is not notably fast.
If he is to keep himself safe at all times, especially in the pocket where Linares’s quickness and willingness to exchange could cause him problems, he will have to shore up his occasionally oddly porous defence. I say oddly porous because, while Haney clearly understands the fundamentals of boxing defence and knows the correct positionings to protect himself, occasionally he will, in the act of rocking back and forth, just time a movement wrong and leave his face staring down the centre line waiting for a cheeky bop from his opponent. Linares has both the speed and the power to make use of this.
But, Linares’ footwork is plodding: he stays rooted while he throws, and Haney should have enough acuity with his feet to keep him moving, limiting Linares’ impact. The real test is whether he can keep this up for the twelve.
On the other hand, Linares has looked a little shopworn of late; his Round 1 loss to the unheralded Pablo Cesar Cano - albeit a weight up from his usual 135lb - was a genuinely worrying sign regarding Linares’ time in the sport. If Haney can land a few clean combos on Jorge then it’s feasible that he can put him away, but I’m going to go by his performance against a less-dangerous (at the point in his career) Yuriorkis and say Haney will play it safe versus Linares and cruise to a Decision Win.
Dan Albert: Now, we’ve all been asking questions of Linares who, at or near his peak,was able to manipulate the centerline off his counterpunching threat to prevent Vasyl Lomachenko from building momentum that easily. At the very least, that’s indicative of someone who can fight in a disciplined manner; the question remains, however, if he needs that engine to establish that threat. For all intents and purposes, Linares still is one of the finest combination punchers of the last few years. I do suspect, given his durability since the loss to Loma, there are reasons to be tentative. I’ll be very curious to see that kind of threat versus Devin Haney.
Speaking of Haney, I confess I haven’t done my enough homework to have a confident read of him technically or in terms of accomplishments. Though I suppose, him receiving a title through what I can assume is a Hilary Clinton leftover email conspiracy (Hang on, lemme write that down for future referentials) does lend itself to its own asterisks, namely how tested, as my peers have said, is he really? From what I have seen, I believe Haney is about controlling initiative with his feints and setting up a singular move to the next. In essence, he doesn’t “flow” the way Linares does and that presents an interesting dynamic.
On the inside, I hesitate to call Haney superlative, but he at least seems to get how to draw shots to step inside and punish while using the ever-prevalent modern anti-infighting ref system for his own benefit. I do have to wonder, though, how much that will work one day against someone who doesn’t fall for his control of entries and can take him off the centerline. Or, otherwise, punish him on the inside. I can see Linares making the former work, though pressing forward might let Haney get inside and into the clinch. The outside though: It’ll be interesting to see how Haney can manipulate Linares’ reactions without being drawn into a longer exchange. I don’t really have a read on how this one will go due to a deficit of research done on Haney. I suppose I’ll take Linares.
Taylor O’Higgins: This version of Linares gets splattered against Teofimo López, and very likely blasted out by Ryan Garcia as well. I’m not sure Haney does the same to him, though. The Venezuelan’s durability has declined quite badly since that frankly bizarre decision to move up to 140lbs against Pablo César Cano, but I’ve never been convinced by Haney’s power. Watch his KO against Moran - rather than drawing power from the ground up, Haney nearly swings himself off his feet. And against a small, ancient Gamboa coming off a career-threatening ACL injury, he never really had the Cuban in trouble. Honestly, I see this going a similar way; I think Haney takes a wide unanimous decision in a fight where Linares gives him a few scares, but ultimately doesn’t have enough left to win.