A welterweight title unification between Devin Haney and Rolly Romero may be coming, according to The Ring’s Mike Coppinger.
Coppinger said on Inside the Ring that negotiations for the bout are getting “closer and closer” and that the fight would happen on May 30 in Las Vegas as the current working idea.
Haney (33-0, 15 KO) holds the WBO welterweight title, which he won last November from Brian Norman Jr. Romero (17-2, 13 KO) has the WBA belt at 147 lbs, winning the then-vacant title against Ryan Garcia
in May of last year.
Neither has fought since those title-winning efforts.
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There had been plenty of talk that Haney, 27, would likely rematch Ryan Garcia, which is seen as the biggest money option for both. Garcia and Haney had an extremely controversial bout just under two years ago, which featured Garcia not coming close to making weight, then dropping Haney three times en route to a majority decision victory. Garcia’s win, however, was changed to a no-contest after Ryan failed an anti-doping test.
Romero, 30, has seemed to want his own Garcia rematch, mainly because again, it’s a money fight. But if Garcia doesn’t want to fight Rolly, as Romero claims, and Haney may not want to fight Garcia again, as Ryan claims, then a clear path to a money fight is for Haney and Romero to face one another, which in a sense leaves Garcia out in the cold.
That said, Garcia has the WBC title now, having dominated Mario Barrios on February 21, and there has been a lot of chatter about potential fights for him, including Shakur Stevenson and Keyshawn Davis, not to mention in-house Golden Boy options like Arnold Barboza Jr and Alexis Rocha, who both won fights this past Saturday.
Nothing is set in stone, of course, until it’s been announced through official channels, but Haney vs Rolly is the strongest rumor at the moment for those two. Whether or not Garcia would take a fight to line up with that in the summer, or simply wait until later in the year to see who wins and may be his next opponent, would remain to be seen.
