Brian Norman Jnr: ‘I know I can go even further than this’
Brian Norman Jnr will never take any of his career success for granted.
He also won’t dismiss the hard work he’s put in to reach this point.
Everything is clicking these days for the red-hot WBO welterweight titlist. His highlight-reel fifth-round knockout of Jin Sasaki on June 19 in Tokyo, Japan, is the runaway leader for 2025 Knockout of the Year. It came less than three months after Norman took out Derrieck Cuevas in less than three rounds.
Next up for the 24-year-old from the greater Atlanta, Georgia, area is a November title defense against Devin Haney, 32-0 (15 KOs), in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The bout is Norman’s most high-profile assignment to date and came the old-fashioned way – hard work.
“That’s the most fun part about all of this. You control your own destiny, you control your own fate,” Norman, 28-0 (22 KOs), told BS. “That’s real life. I couldn’t imagine sitting here being the face of Top Rank and things of that nature. But… I put the work in, I put the reps in and I got here the right way.
“I know I can go even farther than this. I’m in control of my own destiny. It’s up to me how far I can take this.”
The run of good fortune is a far cry from the version of Norman when he first signed with Top Rank.
His January 2023 debut with the company came after a ring absence of more than a year. Norman won an eight-round unanimous decision in a workmanlike performance. He added two more wins in 2023, both of which went the distance and neither of which left an impression.
A three-round no-contest with Janelson Bocachica in March 2024 left Norman in a position where it was time to either make a statement or accept whatever the universe had in store for him.
The game-changer came in his very next fight. Norman delivered what was far and away his best performance to that point in a sizzling 10th-round knockout of Giovani Santillan. The win came with the interim WBO welterweight belt, which he’s since upgraded to the full version and defended with a pair of memorable knockouts.
All that he needed to do was realize what it would take for everything to click.
“The biggest lesson I learned along the way – just go out and be myself,” Norman said. “I needed to embrace who I am as a fighter. When I first started fighting on TV, it was all about ‘What do the fans want? Let me go do this, let me go do that.’ As we all saw – because, let’s be real – it wasn’t working. I was forcing things, nothing was coming natural.
“By the time we got to Giovani Santillan, I was comfortable being myself. We saw what happened there. Then with Derrieck Cuevas, same thing and we saw what happened. Jin Sasaki, we see what’s going on.”
Even before talks progressed to face Haney, the team plan was to get Norman back in the ring sometime this fall. It was important to have three title fights on the year, and a big name to go along with that defense coming as a bonus.
For a while, the fight that everyone wanted to see at 147lbs was between Norman and then-lineal, IBF and WBA champ Jaron “Boots” Ennis, 34-0 (30 KOs). It was on the table last year before talks broke down over the fight’s true worth. The matchup never quite became a reality in 2025, less so once Ennis confirmed he was moving up in weight.
Norman and his team didn’t pay it much mind given the task at hand to face Sasaki on the road in Tokyo. As promised, discussion for the next assignment would begin on June 20.
Barely a week later, his fight with Haney was secured. The matchup continues to dominate the headlines more than 24 hours after Turki Alalshikh – whose Riyadh Season group will bankroll the fight – confirmed it was a done deal.
No trash talk was necessary between the boxers once they were in each other’s sights. That’s not a lesson that Norman needed to learn, though.
“You don’t always have to be disrespectful just to have a good fight and build-up to it. People get the game switched up. Errol Spence and Terence Crawford is a good example. Their fans, they had beef and was always trying to start something that wasn’t really there. Them brothers was cool, dapping it up and all that. They got together and delivered a historic event.
“Even right now, I’m not talking bad about anybody. I’m just gonna be me, put my own little flavor, put some peach sauce on it and just sell the fight that way. We don’t need to be disrespectful. All I need to do is go out there and keep catching bodies.”
