By Matt Plumridge: Take one large, fast, heavy hitting former world champion heavyweight boxer David Haye, and add in a cruiserweight champion Tony Bellew, formerly a light heavyweight contender; stir in a mind-boggling amount of money, a large dose of posturing, a Hollywood movie and some frizzy hair and you end up with a greatly mismatched non-title fight with plenty of icing for the promoter and some crumbs for us fans.
Haye – judging by his flashy white smile is delighted – he is earning another mega pay day for performing a public workout; Bellew gets to keep his world title belt, along with an excuse slip over his performance and can dream of how to spend his career high purse while he lies on the canvas. The promoter, along with (another) bagful of cash, ticks a PPV requirement off the list of the TV company, who in turn generate a better than average return on their box office bonanza for their paying public.
And we get to see a big KO and someone eat humble pie (it will be Tony Bellew for those not taking notes) while having something to chat to with our non-boxing pals about while we enjoy a beer.
I hope we all remember the good time we had when we read the news on Sunday.
There is a dangerous precedent being created with this current trend in boxing. No longer are fighters frustrated by a lack of big money in their division; they simply look up or down a few rungs and target someone with either a rich profile or a rich promoter and shout like crazy. Khan did it against Saul Canelo Alvarez; Kell Brook with Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and now Bellew has successfully taunted Haye into action.
The boxer trading up talks about legacy and history and in truth, they would create this; but when we are talking of the elite level fighters these are not guys who have fluked their way to the top; they are guys – in Alvarez, GGG and Haye – who have proven themselves the strongest in the toughest group of their own size and are being asked by kids in the class below – and not even the best kids! – If they fancy a side bet to see how size matters.
So for all the talk and the razzmatazz, this kind of matchmaking just provides us with a recipe for disaster. Khan got KO’d cold by Alvarez; Brook could have broken more than his eye socket if his trainer hadn’t jumped in at the first sign of defeat and now Bellew is fighting a heavy punching and rabid David Haye.
Hopefully this one passes without incident and Bellew walks away with just a knockout loss to his name; but let’s stop pretending if this makes any sense, before one of our favourite boxers loses their senses.