Roy Jones Jr has dampened cries of controversy following Devin Haney’s undisputed lightweight defence against Vasiliy Lomachenko.
Haney took a unanimous decision on the scorecards after twelve intense rounds of elite-level boxing that left many feeling Lomachenko had scored enough success to win.
Jones, a four-weight world champion and hall-of-famer, spoke to FightHype about the contest, saying he scored it a draw.
“For me, it’s the boxing game. We all want to see people win and do well. To me, either guy that lost on Saturday night was gonna be bad because I love both guys.
I thought they fought one hell of a fight. I thought it really could’ve gone either way, which is why I gave it a draw. And a draw the champ does keep his belts, and we go back and re-do it.”
‘RJJ’ went on to say that it was close enough to come down to the final round, and Lomachenko didn’t put in three minutes that were worthy of walking away undisputed – being a believer that you have to ‘take the champs belts’ from him.
The fighter himself admitted at the post-fight press conference that he ‘took the round off’ in a sense, believing he had already done enough to win.
“There’s arguments on both sides that these guys could’ve won the fight. You can look at Loma’s early shots to the head and say well he landed more shots to the head, but overall, Haney was landing more because he landed body shots and head shots.
Loma’s shots had [Haney’s] head bouncing back, which looks more impressive to some people, but boxing is all of it … Haney dominated the early part of the fight, Loma dominated the second part of the fight, Haney come back in the last round and regained his winning ways.
You can’t take the champ’s belts away on that situation. If Loma had a twelfth round like his eleventh round was, I might’ve gave him the fight on that.”
Despite Jones not being irritated by the result, he believes the business side of boxing should capitalise on any controversy and allow the two fighters to run it back.