Mike Tyson doesn’t understand why David Haye doesn’t fight more often

By Boxing News - 10/08/2012 - Comments

Image: Mike Tyson doesn't understand why David Haye doesn't fight more oftenBy Scott Gilfoid: Mike Tyson is wondering why former WBA heavyweight champion David Haye (26-2, 24 KO’s) isn’t busier with his career and fighting a lot with the money he could be making in the ring. Tyson doesn’t see why Haye should retire because he’s still young.
Tyson said to Sky Sports News “David should continue to fight because he’s a young guy…He must have a lot of money. When I fought, I was fighting as often as possible. He should continue to box and get better and better.”

Tyson really wasn’t all that active of fighter. He was up until 1991, and then he started fighting two times a year and it slowly got worse. Haye fought only twice in 2010, once in 2011 and once in 2012. He’s slowed down in the amount of times he fights after tasting the big money. He probably doesn’t see it as throwing millions of dollars away, but that’s pretty much what he’s doing by not fighting at least four times a year.

I don’t know of anyone that would toss away millions every year, but that’s what Haye is pretty much doing by limiting himself to only fight per year. And if he retires at 32, who knows how many more millions he will have lost by doing that. If he were to look at it in terms of money he could in theory be giving to his children so that they could have a good life, then I imagine it might alarm him to know the money they won’t be getting by not fighting.

Sure, he’ll leave them some money but nearly as much as he could if he had been an active heavyweight and not talked about retiring at such an early age. Also, if Haye ends up losing the cash that he did make through divorce, gambling, bad investments or just living the high life, I bet he’ll be wishing he had taken every fight he could have gotten to squeeze out the most money for his career. The thing is I don’t think he sees it that way. He just got some money and he seems satisfied with the money he’s gotten instead of having ambition to make even more.

Some boxing fans think that Haye wants to retire now while he’s still young because he’s afraid of failure. He doesn’t want to look bad and have to live with himself afterwards when and if he gets spanked by somebody. As such, he’s willing to bypass millions of dollars in order to keep fro experiencing that failure. I guess he’s not quite like Mike Tyson, who definitely was willing to get the most out of his career.



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