This is how you fix a division: put the belts in a bracket and make everybody earn the last man standing. AKHi TV says DAZN is actually creating a mini welterweight tournament, and the pairings the host lays out are the right ones. Devin Haney vs Liam Paro, December 19, a unification. Ryan Garcia vs Teofimo Lopez for the other two belts, planned for February 6, 2027. Win your half, and the road ends at undisputed — the host’s conditional projection is the whole point of the exercise: if Haney and Garcia are both victorious in their upcoming fights, Haney vs Garcia for undisputed would be the biggest fight in boxing next year.
There is one named obstacle, and it is a real one: Jack Catterall is Teofimo Lopez’s mandatory. If Lopez has to deal with Catterall first, the host floats a stay-busy fight for Garcia instead of letting him sit — Garcia vs Pitbull Cruz, a fight the host likes the look of while admitting it is hard to make. That is tournament discipline, and it matters, because the last thing this bracket can afford is a year of everybody waiting on everybody else — Haney has already shown what cutting out the middleman and going direct with DAZN looks like. A structure like this rewards exactly that kind of decisiveness.
The host is just as clear about what is NOT on the table. The talk of Ryan Garcia in serious negotiations with Floyd Mayweather gets dismissed as cap that industry media ran with: Floyd already has an exhibition on December 19 against an Australian, and the host asks why Floyd would fight Garcia for less money when, on his account, Mayweather turned down about $100 million for a Manny Pacquiao rematch. The host also asserts — and we print it as his assertion — that Garcia’s fight with Conor Benn was such a flop that Zuffa lost a lot of money and reported nothing on it. And through all of it, the host makes no pick: not for Haney-Paro, not for Garcia-Lopez, not for a tournament winner. The bracket speaks for itself.
Our take: the emotional centre of this tournament is Garcia’s debt. His win over Haney — described in the video as his biggest, arguably his only significant career win — was removed because of cheating, and the host’s De La Hoya-Vargas analogy lands: Vargas got caught on PEDs the night De La Hoya knocked him out and won the Mexican fans’ respect back in the ring, not in statements. Garcia cannot talk his way clean. He has to beat Teofimo Lopez, then beat Haney with nothing in his system and nothing to explain. If DAZN really is building this, it is the best thing to happen to 147 in years — four names, two dates, one undisputed ending.
Video credit: AKHi TV.
