Tim Bradley Says Devin Haney Earned Big Money by Taking Short Purses
Tim Bradley is using Devin Haney as the example of a fighter who took short money early and can now ask for big paydays without being the sport’s biggest ticket seller. In a sidewalk video posted this week, the former two-division champion also turned on fighters he says are “pocket watching” one another now that the easy money has slowed.
“See, this is the difference between when you earn your keep, right?” Bradley said. “And then you just feel like you obligated to get what’s out there, to get big money. You see, that’s the difference between Devin Haney and all these guys.”
Bradley went back to Haney’s early road work. He said Haney was “going back to Mexico” early in his career, “fighting for, you know, a thousand dollars, whatever it was,” then “climbing up through the ranks, taking short money” and flying to Australia. The Mexico part matches the record. Haney took several of his first title-level steps in Tijuana in 2016 and 2017, including a fourth-round stoppage of Maximino Toala for the vacant WBC Youth lightweight title.
The Australia trip is the one that changed his standing. On June 5, 2022, Haney went to Docklands Stadium in Melbourne and outpointed George Kambosos Jr. to become the undisputed lightweight champion, adding the WBA, IBF, WBO and Ring titles to the WBC belt he already held. He went back to Rod Laver Arena that October and won the rematch. Bradley called those the short-money choices that put Haney “in the king’s position.”
Haney is 33-0 with one no contest and 15 knockouts. He is the WBO welterweight champion after a unanimous decision over Brian Norman Jr. in Riyadh on November 22, 2025, and The Ring still has him No. 1 at 147 pounds. Bradley did not pretend that résumé makes Haney a gate attraction.
“I’m not gonna say he don’t sell, but at the same time, he’s not the biggest draw,” Bradley said. “He’s not, but he still requires a lot of money, because what? The accolades, everything he done in the sport. And he worked himself from the ground up, and that’s the reason why his business sense, him and his father’s business sense is the way it is.”
Bill Haney has run his son’s career from the start, and Bradley treated that partnership as the payoff for taking the smaller checks. He then widened the argument to the last few years of the boxing market. “Turki Alalshikh, Big Turk came in the game,” Bradley said, “turned it upside down, was paying all these guys, it was gravy, he was giving them candy. He was the candy man.” Bradley’s view is that the pace has eased. “Things has kinda slowed down a bit. Now reality is starting to set in for some guys.”
That is where the clip stops being a Haney tribute. Bradley said someone had asked him, “Tim, why you pocket watching?” He flipped it. “Man, these fighters be pocket watching each other. Yeah, well, if he getting that, then I should be getting this, and he should be getting that. No, it’s about proving yourself. It’s about winning top fights, you know, for whatever money you are getting, to put yourself in a position like a Devin Haney.”
He did not name Gary Antuanne Russell in the video. The comments land in the middle of a public argument Bradley has already been having with the WBA super lightweight champion over a reported offer to fight Shakur Stevenson. Bradley had called Russell a duck for not taking what he described as a $2 million unification, then walked the label back after saying Russell had another route to similar money. The purse figures remain Bradley’s account. The new clip reads as the broader version of that complaint: fighters measuring themselves against someone else’s check instead of the fight in front of them.
Bradley closed by talking to the younger end of the sport, not to Haney. “Earn your damn keep. Earn them big paychecks,” he said. “Sometimes you gotta take less to end up getting more in the end, to position yourself. Take them damn risk.” He added that “there’s a big shift in the market, in boxing” and that “them gravy glory days is over with.”
Whether the Saudi-era purses have actually tightened is Bradley’s reading, not a published ledger. What the record does show is the path he is holding up. Haney took the away fights, became undisputed at 135, and is now the man at the top of the welterweight ratings with a WBO belt. Bradley’s point is that the paycheck followed the wins, and that the fighters still comparing purses have the order backward.
