Bill Haney appeared on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani to talk about the recently announced fight between his son Devin and Ryan Garcia. During the segment Haney explains what it took in order to bring the fight to reality and how and why they’ll continue to work with whatever promoter necessary to make the fights we want to see. Check out some excerpts below.
Bill Haney on how difficult it was to make fight between his son and Ryan Garcia “Hey, let’s push all politics to the side and know that Golden Boy, Oscar De La Hoya has been a pillar in the community, representing boxing, representing the big events. So we have to push all egos, all pride to the side. Promoters now are working together. I think we’ve been working with everyone. We’ve worked with the legendary Bob Arum himself, we’ve had a long relationship with Eddie Hearn and Matchroom, early on it was ShoBox and Showtime. So it’s only right…”
On if they still have a business relationship with Matchroom “Listen, no one is going to leave our fond memories with Eddie Hearn and Matchroom. Even if we told you we were just with Oscar, someone would still say ‘but you’re still with Eddie.’ So, listen, it’s almost like we have a love affair with Eddie. We also entered into different marriages with Bob and now with Oscar. What can I say, man. If we’re all eating and we’re all doing good, let’s make these fights happen.
“So to answer your question about Eddie, he’s still around, he’s still there and he’s been there for us.”
On if Hearn was involved in the negotiations to make Garcia fight “No, I did this. I made this happen. Obviously with the relationship between Eddie and Oscar, it might be a wedge between them…we don’t want to let past relationships stop Devin from being able to make the fight happen. So I went to that infamous meeting over at Vergil Ortiz’s fight and I got a little resistance from Bernard Hopkins, but I was able to weave my way in and get Oscar De La Hoya to take a listen. And he said ‘You know what, Bill? Let’s go to work on it.’”
On if they ever got close to making a fight with Gervonta Davis “Well, it got close enough that his excellency, Turki Alalshikh came on board to dispel any narrative that money was a problem, because the bothers over there were willing to make it happen and kill any narratives. So with that saying, it came that close but of course you heard that Tank suggested that he’d be given or sent a couple Ferraris.
“I didn’t get in the way because I didn’t want him to offend his excellency, so I ask ‘what color would you want?’ But before I could get a reply back Turki Alalshikh himself said that he would only be sending gloves to Tank Davis’ team. And I think negotiations and talks fell off after that.”
