LAS VEGAS – It has been noted numerous times during the buildup toward his lightweight title fight versus Devin Haney that each of Jorge Linares’ five defeats have come by technical knockout.

What hasn’t been mentioned much is that Linares has never lost a fight for which he trained in Japan. The former WBA/WBC lightweight champion prepared for this 12-round, 135-pound championship match exclusively at Teiken Gym in Tokyo, where the native Venezuelan permanently resides with his girlfriend.

“I’ve had my ups and downs in my career,” Linares told BoxingScene.com. “But only I know in those defeats what went wrong and what happened. Going back to training in Japan was like a cleansing psychologically because I know what works. And going back to Japan is what works.”

Linares (47-5, 29 KOs) had returned from the United States to Japan, where he has lived for almost all of his adult life, following his fourth-round knockout of Mexican veteran Carlos Morales (19-5-4, 8 KOs) in February 2020 by the time the COVID-19 pandemic began. The 35-year-old Linares eventually contracted COVID-19 while training last summer, which caused the cancelation of a fight against Dominican southpaw Javier Fortuna that was scheduled for August 28.

Once his fight with the 22-year-old Haney (25-0, 15 KOs) was scheduled for Saturday night, Linares remained in Tokyo, where his brother, Carlos, trained him. He prepared either in Las Vegas or Los Angeles for his five TKO losses to Juan Carlos Salgado, Antonio DeMarco, Sergio Thompson, Vasiliy Lomachenko and Pablo Cesar Cano.

“He went back to his roots, where it all started,” Robert Diaz, Golden Boy Promotions’ matchmaker, told BoxingScene.com. “When he’s trained in Japan, he has never lost. That’s something very, very important. When he has trained in Vegas, he went back to Japan and fought, but the training was here. That was his first loss [in October 2009]. Two fights [when he trained] in LA was a loss. Outside of Japan, there’s been some losses, of course. There’s been some victories, of course. But while he has trained in Japan, he has never lost.”

DAZN will stream Haney-Linares as its main event from Mandalay Bay’s Michelob Ultra Arena. The streaming service will offer four undercard bouts before Haney-Linares, starting at 8 p.m. EDT and 5 p.m. PDT.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.