By Scott Gilfoid: Tony Bellew’s promoter Eddie Hearn thinks David Haye (28-2, 26 KOs) hasn’t put in the same kind of effort as Bellew in getting ready for their March 4 fight on Sky Box Office PPV. Haye has been seen lying in the sun, soaking in a Jacuzzi and playing basketball in recent weeks.
Hearn wonders if the 36-year-old Haye has prepared himself enough to win the fight at the O2 Arena in London, England.
Haye knows what kind of preparation he’s going to need for him to beat the 34-year-old Bellew, who looks like of flabby even when fighting at cruiserweight. For this fight, Bellew has bulked up to 225 pounds, and he doesn’t look like he’s in the best physical condition. Bellew has put on a lot of weight, and hasn’t had a tune-up to adequately prepare himself for what he’s going to be dealing with when he gets inside the ring with Haye.
Whether Haye has trained hard enough for the Bellew fight to still beat him is debatable. Haye is going to be the much faster and more powerful fighter than Bellew regardless of how hard he’s worked during training camp.
You can argue that Haye is the much better athlete of the two, and has the better boxing skills. Bellew has been matched pretty carefully by Hearn since he moved up to cruiserweight several years ago. There hasn’t been one tough fight yet for Bellew.
The closest thing that Bellew has come to facing a tough opponent was his match against Ilunga Makabu. There are far better fighters in the cruiserweight division than Makabu, and Bellew has fought none of them. Only Hearn knows why he hasn’t matched Bellew against talents like Krzystof Glowacki, Murat Gassiev, Denis Lebedev and Oleksandr Usyk.
“There’s only a few weeks until David Haye and Tony Bellew get unleashed on each other on March 4 at The O2. There’s something about the preparations that has made me think,” said Hearn to the dailymail.co.uk.“Haye, to judge from what I’ve seen and heard, seems to have been sunning himself in a variety of time zones while Bellew has been locked away in a Sheffield hotel, thinking only about their fight,” said Hearn.
Haye must feel like he doesn’t need to overdo it in training camp to get ready for the Bellew fight. Haye sees weakness in Bellew that makes him believe that he doesn’t need to train as hard as he would if he were facing a big heavyweight like Deontay Wilder or Anthony Joshua.
Since the odds of Bellew making it past the 2nd round are probably very low, it doesn’t make sense for Haye to work extremely hard during training camp. He’s doing the right thing by working on staying limber, focusing on his hand speed, and breathing good clean air by being outside in the sun. Once Haye starts bouncing power shots off the chin of Bellew, we’re likely to see him dropping repeatedly to the canvas like he did in his fight against Adonis Stevenson. Haye is a bigger puncher than Stevenson. If Bellew couldn’t handle the power shots from Stevenson, then it stands to reason that he won’t be able to handle Haye’s power for more than a round or less.
“Tony is the underdog, no doubt about that. But is David ready to go to some horrible, dark places to win? I wonder about that,” said Hearn.