Devin Haney has reportedly reached “advanced negotiations” for his maiden WBO title defence, with the welterweight champion seemingly still targeting a date of October 3.
Initially, this date was reserved for his mandatory title defence against Keyshawn Davis, only for their contest to go up in smoke after the ‘Businessman’ withdrew his interest.
The whole saga saw Davis reject a reported offer of $3m, before pulling out of the fight after a WBO purse bid hearing resulted in his promoter, Top Rank, winning with a sum of $8.55m.
As per the sanctioning bodies’ 75/25 split in favour of the champion, this would have meant Davis pocketing a total of $2.14m.
With Davis forgoing his mandatory position, however, Haney began pursuing a unification match with Liam Paro, who dethroned Lewis Crocker for the IBF 147lb title in June.
According to boxing journalist Julius Julianis, though, the Aussie priced himself out of negotiations and left Haney scratching around for yet another new opponent.
As per a Julianis social media post, which has been reshared by Haney, this led the three-weight world champion to invite Jack Catterall to the negotiating table.
“Devin Haney and Jack Catterall are in advanced negotiations to face off on October 3rd for the WBO welterweight world title currently held by Haney. Negotiations with Liam Paro broke down due to the Australian’s excessive financial demands.”
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Devin Haney y Jack Catterall, en negociaciones muy avanzadas para enfrentarse el 3 de octubre por el Mundial wélter WBO que ostenta HaneyLa negociación con Liam Paro se rompió por las excesivas pretensiones económicas del australiano#HaneyCatterall
— JuliusJulianis (@julianisjulius) August 7, 2026
Catterall comes off arguably a career-best performance against Shakhram Giyasov, who he unanimously outpointed for the WBA ‘regular’ title in May.
Haney, meanwhile, has not fought since dethroning Brian Norman Jr in November; back when he, like Catterall, scored an early knockdown before winning convincingly on points.
