By Scott Gilfoid: For some reason, IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua is pulling for Tony Bellew to defeat David Haye this Saturday night in their big fight at the O2 Arena in London, UK. Unfortunately for Joshua, Bellew (28-2-1, 18 KOs) is the underdog in the fight, and it’s going to take the perfect set of circumstances for him to pull off the upset against Haye.
What I want to know is why Joshua wants Bellew to win? Does Joshua not want to fight Haye? There are more than a few boxing fans who feel that Haye is all wrong for the slow, lethargic and heavily muscled Joshua. Is Joshua hoping that Bellew will win against Haye so that he’s off the hook and doesn’t need to fight Haye? I don’t know, but I think it’s awfully fishy that Joshua is pulling for Bellew to do a number on Haye.
The money fight is Joshua vs. Haye. Why would Joshua want Haye to lose to Bellew when the big cash would come from a fight against Haye? Bellew isn’t well-known in the U.S like Haye is. Joshua vs. Haye sells. Joshua vs. Bellew is a fight that would likely only interest the domestic boxing fans.
Bellew points out that he weighs the same amount as Haye, which is true. They both weight around 225 lbs. However, is cut from a different set of cloth than Bellew. We’re talking about a better fighter and far superior athlete with Haye. Bellew is just a guy that was previously one of the many contenders at light heavyweight before he moved up to cruiserweight and won the WBC title against a vulnerable fighter in Ilunga Makabu. Bellew was arguably put in the right situation to win the WBC title.
Bellew didn’t have to beat a talented fighter like Oleksandr Usyk, Marco Huck, Mairis Briedis, Denis Lebedev, Beibut Shumenov or Murat Gassiev. I hate to say it, but I think Bellew would be knocked out by pretty much all of those fighters. He might go the distance with Shumenov, but I think he would be clowned by him badly. I see the rest of those guys knocking Bellew out.
You’ve got to give Bellew’s promoter Eddie Hearn a lot of credit for making a world champion out of him at cruiserweight with his match-making, because if he had steered Bellew in the wrong direction towards one of the above mentioned talented cruiserweights, then I think he’d have been badly beaten. Now Bellew is about to fight a guy out of his class literally in David Haye on Saturday night on Sky Box Office PPV.
The outcome is so predictable. The end result you get when you mess with someone angry, fast and powerful like Haye is a bad knockout loss. I think we’re going to see that on Saturday night with Bellew getting starched in lightning fashion in the 1st round. I think there will be a lot of angry Bellew fans after the fight.
“It’s going to be a tough fight, especially for Bellew, the reason being he’s had to move up [a weight],” Joshua said to skysports.com. ”I would love it if Bellew landed a ‘haymaker’ and put a sock in David Haye’s mouth for a bit. I’m supporting him.”
The only way Bellew is going to be able to have a chance of beating Haye is if he drags him into the later rounds, and then shoots for a knockout. If Bellew chooses to box Haye for the first 10 rounds, he’s going to fall WAY behind in the fight to the “Hayemaker”, but there’s a sliver of a chance that he could tire him out. Haye hasn’t fought any long fights in many years. His last two fights against Mark De Mori and Arnold Gjergjaj last year were one round affairs with Haye blasting them out immediately.
Haye hasn’t fought a 12 round fight since losing to Wladimir Klitschko in 2011. The bad news for Bellew is that Haye has never gassed out in a 12 round fight before. In Haye’s 12 round fights against Nikolai Valuev, Klitschko and Ismail Abdoul, he was still punching very hard and very fast in the 12th.
If Bellew chooses to box and run for 12 rounds, he’s not going to win that kind of fight. But I can understand why Bellew would want to at least try and drag Haye into the deeper waters. It’s Bellew’s only chance of winning. It’s not much of a chance, but it’s probably the only one he’s got. If Bellew tries to go after Haye in the first four rounds of the fight, he’s going to be facing when he’s fresh and powerful. Haye will have the upper hand on him. I don’t think Bellew is going to be able to survive even if his focus is to box Haye and get him into the later rounds. Haye will cut off the ring in the first round, an look to score a fast knockout with a head shot.
“I think it would be a different story if Haye had to drop a weight, which I initially thought it was, and it’s going to be tough for Bellew,” said Joshua.
I disagree completely with Joshua about Haye having more problems against Bellew if he had to drop weight. Even if Haye had to drop 10-15 pounds to make weight, I still see him being too fast, too powerful and too athletic for the upright Bellew to deal with. Haye is a world champion level fighter. Bellew is more of a contender level guy, and not necessarily the best of the contenders. I mean, let’s be real. I you scan the cruiserweight division’s ranks, do you honestly think Bellew can beat Marco Huck, Mairis Briedis, Dmitry Kudryashov or Krzysof Glowacki? Those are just 3 of the dangerous contenders in the cruiserweight division. There’s at least 6 more that I believe would beat Bellew as well.
At light heavyweight, I don’t think Bellew could handle talents like Artur Beterbiev, Sergey Kovalev, Joe Smith Jr. or Oleksandr Usyk. Like I said before, I think Bellew’s promoter Eddie Hearn has done a great job of match-making with Bellew in turning him into a paper champion at cruiserweight by matching him against a flawed fighter in Ilunga Makaba. Of course, if the World Boxing Council had insisted that Bellew face Huck or Briedis instead of Makabu, then he likely would have been beaten and we wouldn’t be talking about him as a champion. It’s unclear why the WBC gave the green light to Bellew vs. Makabu being for their vacant WBC cruiserweight title last year. I didn’t understand the move, because I rated Huck, Glowacki and Briedis as far better fighters than Bellew and Makabu.