By William Mackay: Former world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis, now 46, has offered to assist in the training of former WBA heavyweight champion David Haye in trying to get ready for a fight against WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko for a potential mega fight in 2012. However, Lewis’ help was refused.
Speaking with the mirror.co.uk, Lewis said “I did offer to help Haye’s trainer Adam Booth, but he refused it, and yet he was pitting his wits against the man who made me what I am [Emanuel Steward]. Now Haye’s talking about fighting Vitali, but what is he going to do any differently against the better Klitschko? If he jumps straight back in against Vitali, he would be wasting his time. He needs to beat a couple of guys first to build his confidence…Sure, I’ll train him. You can teach an old dog new tricks.”
I’m not all surprised that Booth would say no to Lewis training Haye for the Klitschko bout, because if Lewis did a good job with Haye, it could make Booth kind of irrelevant with Haye. The last thing that Booth needs is Lewis, with all of his boxing knowledge, to come in and do a better job than him.
Booth could end up being the spit bucket guy if Lewis did a great job with Haye. But seriously, Lewis probably couldn’t do worse than Booth in training Haye for the Vitali fight, because we saw how Haye only had a plan A in his last fight against Vitali’s brother IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko last July. There were no adjustments made whatsoever in that fight by Haye, and there’s no way that Haye would have been able to get away with fighting like that if Lewis was the trainer.
In between rounds, Lewis would likely get in Haye’s face and command him to attack Wladimir. Lewis wouldn’t have gone for the timid way that Haye fought against Wladimir. He would have Haye use a plan B, which obviously would have entailed him going right after Wladimir. But, of course, maybe Haye wouldn’t want someone like Lewis pressuring him to fight without fear.
I think Haye had nothing to lose at this point and he can’t do worse with Lewis as his trainer. He needs to dump Booth or give him another job, like holding the towel or something while Lewis does the training. Booth is good at teaching fighters to do the feints and all that, but he seems kind of limited beyond that. I see Haye as the loyal type, which is why he’ll stick with Booth and get stomped by Vitali at some point in the future.
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