Bellew criticizes Haye for not going after Wilder

By Boxing News - 04/29/2018 - Comments

Image: Bellew criticizes Haye for not going after Wilder

By Scott Gilfoid: Tony Bellew doesn’t think too much of David Haye choosing to fight him rather than going after WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder. Bellew thinks that Haye didn’t like his chances of beating the 6’7” Wilder, so he chose to go after him last year in their fight on March 4.

Bellew (29-2-1, 19 KOs) won the fight in the 11th round after Haye’s trainer at the time Shane McGuigan threw in the towel after he had slipped outside of the ring while fighting. Haye (28-3, 26 KOs) and the 35-year-old Bellew will be facing each other in a rematch this Saturday night on Sky Box Office PPV on May 5 at the O2 Arena in London, England.

While there isn’t much of any interest at all from the boxing public outside of the UK in a second fight between Haye and Bellew, the interest is sky high among the fans inside the country. The UK fans are chomping at the bit in looking forward to the 37-year-oldn Haye and Bellew facing each other again. For me, I have mild interest in seeing the rematch. If the first fight was an exciting one, I’d be more up for it, but it wasn’t all that great.

Up until Haye blew out his right Achilles tendon in the 6th, he was winning the fight with his jab. Haye looked ring rusty as heck, with his timing and accuracy completely off. Bellew made it hard for Haye to land his shots with the way he was darting away constantly to stay out of harm’s way. Bellew used a peck and run style of fighting that he’s never employed in the past, and it wasn’t working for him. Haye was controlling the action with his jab and the fight excruciatingly boring to watch.

It was like watching paint dry in the afternoon sun. Bellew had absolutely no heart for the fight even though the contest was sold to the British boxing fans on Sky Box Office. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Bellew will fight the same way as last time, because he doesn’t have the chin, speed or the power to stand in front of Haye and fight him. As such, Bellew will spoil like no tomorrow on Saturday night and hope that he can steal enough rounds to either win or get a draw.

A draw won’t be bad for Bellew, because then he can sell a third fight against Haye to the UK fans. It would be better for both fighters to move on after this Saturday’s fight, because it’s going to look like a big money grab if they just keep fighting each other instead of moving on to the more relevant fighters in the heavyweight division.

Haye and Bellew are not relevant fighters, because neither of them has beaten any quality heavyweights in years. In Bellew’s case, he’s never beaten one of the heavyweights from this era other than the injured Haye, who is really more of a heavyweight from the past era. Haye is a guy that was briefly making noise way back in 2011. Since then, he’s been nowhere, dealing with constant injuries and inactivity.

”Why didn’t he make the Deontay Wilder fight? He doesn’t fancy it,” Bellew said to skysports.com about why Haye didn’t fight Wilder. “If you came back to unify the heavyweight division, so you fought those two guys who I labelled as crabs, absolute disgraceful, but you beat them two. You could have very easily made yourself a world heavyweight title fight, could you not have? David knows that, so that’s why he won’t answer. It could have been done very easily,” Bellew said.

I don’t think Haye would do very well at all against the 6’7” Wilder at this point. Haye has been too inactive for the last 6 years of his career, and he’s not been fighting good heavyweights.

Here are Haye’s fights since 2012:

• Tony Bellew

• Arnold Gjergjaj

• Mark de Mori

• Dereck Chisora

None of those heavyweights are A-level guys. Bellew is basically a light heavyweight, who ate his way to heavyweight, and he hasn’t fought anyone yet that wasn’t injured. If Bellew had gotten off his backside in the last year and fought one of the good heavyweights like Luis Ortiz, then he’d at least have that going for him. I don’t think Bellew would do well against Ortiz, because he’s too powerful and far too talented and experienced.

Haye points out that his fights with Bellew are bigger money matches than if he took on Deontay Wilder, so it was a no brainer for him to go in that direction. The UK fans were more interested in seeing Haye fight Bellew, who had a role in one of Sylvester Stallone’s movies, ‘Creed,’ in 2015.

Bellew’s popularity increased from being in the movie even though he wasn’t doing a lot with his career. Bellew won the vacant WBC cruiserweight title when he got a lucky break with the World Boxing Council ordering him to fight the very beatable Illunga Makabu instead of the arguably far more talented and dangerous Mairis Briedis.

Unbelievably, the WBC ranked Makabu above Briedis, and then let Bellew fight him instead of insisting that he fight Briedis, who likely would have beaten him. Then after Bellew defeated the vulnerable Makabu by a 3rd round knockout in May 2016, the WBC let Bellew sidestep the fight against his #1 WBC contender Briedis and fight #14 WBC fringe contender BJ Flores instead. It looked to a lot of boxing fans that Bellew ducked Briedis.

After it became clear that Bellew wasn’t going to fight Briedis, the WBC changed his status to ‘Emeritus champion.’ They then ordered Briedis to fight Marco Huck in April of last year. Briedis easily beat Huck by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision. Briedis subsequently lost his WBC title to WBO cruiserweight champion Oleksandr Usyk by a close 12 round majority decision last January. Usyk will eventually face IBF/WBA cruiserweight champion Murat Gassiev in the finals of the World Boxing Super Series.

Usyk is currently injured, and once he’s healed up, he’ll face the younger, stronger and more powerful Gassiev in a unification fight. Bellew has made noise about using his WBC emeritus tag to fight the winner of the Usyk vs. Gassiev fight. We’ll have to see if Bellew actually does that.

Bellew’s promoter Eddie Hearn is going to need to move quickly to try and make the Bellew-Usyk fight after Usyk faces Gassiev in the finals of the WBSS tournament, because the Ukrainian is expected to vacate his titles straightaway and move up to heavyweight to go after IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua. Usyk isn’t going to wait around for the rest of his career for Bellew to make up his mind whether he wants to fight him or not. None of this will matter if Bellew loses to Haye this Saturday. If Bellew loses that fight, then his popularity will likely sink to the bottom of the ocean, and there won’t be enough incentive for Usyk to throw him a bone by giving him a fight.

“That’s why he calls Anthony Joshua’s name, because the risk is big, it’s real big, but the reward is ginormous,” Bellew said about Haye.

You can understand why Haye is interested in fighting Joshua. Haye would get a big payday from that fight, and it would keep him rolling in dough for a long time if not for the rest of his life. Fighting Wilder would mean less money for Haye, and he’d likely be knocked out anyway, so it’s a bad fight for him. It’s also a bad fight for Bellew. He doesn’t match up well against Wilder due to his height, each, speed, power and talent.