Devin Haney Biography: The Career Built in a Tijuana Pool Hall

On 11 December 2015 a 17-year-old from Las Vegas made his professional debut in a Tijuana billiards hall called Billar El Perro Salado. He stopped a Mexican fighter named Gonzalo López inside a round. No television, no undercard slot, no promoter.

That venue was not a gimmick. It was the only place on earth he was legally allowed to fight.

Why California Said No

Devin Haney was born on 17 November 1998 in San Francisco, spent his early childhood in Oakland, and moved to Las Vegas at fourteen with his father, Bill. He had been in a gym since he was seven and had already finished with the amateur game: a record in the region of 130 wins and 8 losses, and seven US national titles.

At seventeen he wanted to turn professional. California licenses boxers at eighteen. The answer was no.

The obvious move was to wait the year out, sign with a major promoter, take the bonus and start on undercards. The Haneys did neither. They crossed the border, where there was no age bar, the shows cost almost nothing to stage, and the local opposition was considerably harder than the padded records American prospects are usually fed.

Ten of Haney’s first fifteen professional fights happened in Mexico, in rooms holding a few hundred people.

Bill Haney’s One Rule

The Tijuana decision was never really about a licence. It was about the principle Bill Haney has organised his son’s entire career around, which is that nobody else gets a permanent share of it.

Bill is Devin’s father, trainer, manager, and the head of Devin Haney Promotions. He came into boxing by way of the music industry, and the logic he brought with him is blunt: a promoter who fronts the risk takes a cut of everything that follows, forever, and the fighter never buys that percentage back.

So they turned down signing bonuses, funded the lean years themselves, and rented promotional partners fight by fight when it suited them. Top Rank on one card, Matchroom on another, Riyadh Season later on. No standing contract.

It is an unusual arrangement in a sport built almost entirely against it. The financial mechanics are set out in our Devin Haney net worth breakdown.

The cost of that independence is simple. Nobody hands you a title shot. You go and take one.

Melbourne, 5 June 2022

Haney picked up an interim WBC lightweight belt in 2019 and was elevated to full champion later that year, which is exactly the sort of paper title that invites an asterisk.

The real championship belonged to George Kambosos Jr., who had beaten Teófimo López, had a stadium crowd in Australia, and had no reason whatsoever to travel.

So Haney went to him. At Marvel Stadium in Melbourne on 5 June 2022, in front of a crowd overwhelmingly against him, he won a unanimous decision to become undisputed lightweight champion of the four-belt era at 23. Kambosos exercised the rematch clause four months later in the same city. Haney won that one more comfortably.

Flying to an opponent’s home country to take four belts is not what an A-side does. It is what a fighter without a promoter’s protection has to do.

Lomachenko, Prograis, and the Result That Vanished

The three years after Melbourne were the strangest of his career.

He beat Vasyl Lomachenko on a split decision in May 2023, a verdict plenty of people still dispute. He moved up to super-lightweight that December and won a title from Regis Prograis in something close to a shutout.

Then Ryan Garcia, April 2024. Garcia missed weight, dropped Haney three times, and won a majority decision. Weeks later he tested positive for ostarine. The result was overturned to a no contest, Garcia was suspended for a year and fined, and Haney’s unbeaten record survived on a technicality that was not his fault and did not satisfy anybody.

That night remains the argument that follows him around.

He answered it the only way available to him. May 2025, a twelve-round decision over José Ramírez. Then 22 November 2025 in Riyadh, where he outclassed Brian Norman Jr. to take the WBO welterweight title, a third world championship in a third weight class.

In 2026 the WBO ordered purse bids for a mandatory defence against Keyshawn Davis, while Haney publicly pushed for Rolando Romero or a Garcia rematch instead.

My Read on the Criticism

The standard complaint about Haney is that he is a risk-averse points fighter in an era that pays for violence, and that he has been in precisely one thrilling fight, the one struck from his record.

I think the complaint is accurate and beside the point.

Haney fights the way a man fights when his father funded the first fifteen bouts out of pocket and there is no promoter absorbing a loss. Caution is the business model. Watch the Norman fight again and you are watching a boxer who has calculated exactly how much risk a night is worth, and who declines to spend a penny more than that.

Whether that makes him great or merely undefeated is the open question. My own view: the Melbourne trip settles more of it than his critics allow. Fighters who avoid risk do not fly 8,000 miles to challenge an undisputed champion in a stadium full of his own supporters.

Where He Stands at 27

He is 33-0 with one no contest and 15 knockouts, a champion at 147lbs, unbeaten across a decade, and still younger than most fighters are when they win a first belt. In January 2025 he became a father to a daughter, Khrome.

The ledger reads: three divisions, four belts at 23, no defeats, no promoter drawing a percentage, and a career that began in a pool hall because the alternative was waiting a year and owing someone.

See where his earnings place him among the richest boxers.