By Scott Gilfoid: David Haye (26-2, 24 KOs) said last Saturday night to Sky Sports that he and British and Commonwealth heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua’s “paths will cross” in the near future. Haye, 35, was working as one of the broadcast analysts for Sky for Joshua’s fight against Dillian Whyte (16-1, 13 KOs) at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
Haye says he saw flaws in Joshua’s game that he can definitely take advantage of when he gets inside the ring with him. Haye could wind up facing Joshua as early as next year, because Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn seems very interested in making that fight happen.
With Haye’s advanced age and his fragile physical condition, it would seem imperative that Hearn makes the Joshua-Haye fight as soon as possible, because Haye could lose to someone else or fall apart physically with another debilitating injury to one of his limbs.
Besides Haye, Hearn is talking about a fight between Joshua and Dereck Chisora. That’s not a great fight unless you like seeing Joshua take a backwards step from the Whyte fight. A lot of boxing fans think the 31-year-old Chisora is past his best at this stage in his career. That’s the fight that will likely come next for Joshua.
Haye has the hand speed and punching power to potentially give Joshua problems. The only real problem with a Haye-Joshua fight is Haye’s weight. He weighed only 210lb for his fight against former IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko four years ago in his one-sided 12 round unanimous decision loss in 2011 in Hamburg, Germany.
The 6’6” Wladimir won the fight by doing little more than staying on the outside, jabbing, throwing occasional right hands, and moving around the ring. Joshua obviously can’t move like Wladimir, because he’s flat-footed and too muscled to be mobile. But Joshua would still have close to a 40 pound weight advantage in additional to a four inch height advantage.
The size differences between the two fighters would be too much to make it a serious fight. I guess that won’t stop the British boxing public from still purchasing the fight believing that it will somehow be competitive. It won’t.
Joshua is better off fighting Whyte a second time than fighting the smallish Haye. Besides that, Haye hasn’t fought in three years since his win over the journeyman level Chisora in 2012. That’s a long time to be out of the ring. I can’t take seriously a fight between Haye and Joshua.
Haye has a fight coming up next month against #10 WBA Mark de Mori (30-1-2, 25 KOs) on January 16th at the O2 Arena in London, UK. Now this is supposed to be a mismatch, because de Mori, 33, is someone who has never really fought any halfway decent fighters during his 11-year pro career, but as ring rusty and as small as Haye is, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if de Mori uses his superior size to score a stoppage win. If de Mori turns the fight into a war, he might be able to score a knockout.
“I’m glad that we haven’t put our rivalry to rest but I got to give him a sweet uppercut to humble him and I can move forward into 2016 with that in the past,” Joshua said to skysports.com.
I don’t agree with Joshua’s hallucination about his stoppage win having humbled Whyte. If you listened to an interview of Whyte after the fight, he sounded far from humbled. In fact, he sounded like he still very much disliked Joshua. Whyte would like a rematch if possible; not that he’s ever going to get one.
Whye will be waiting a long, long time if he wants a rematch with Joshua, because I don’t see it happening until far, far into the future, and even then it will require that Whyte win all of his fights to get to it. Of course, Joshua’s career could get derailed as well once he starts facing the top caliber heavyweights like Deontay Wilder, Bryant Jennings, Alexander Povetkin and Luis Ortiz.
“Dillian will be remembered as the person who took my past three rounds for the first time. I said that before, that’s all it is. I give him credit for that,” Joshua said.
Joshua can also add that Whyte is the first one to almost knock him out after hurting him badly in the 2nd round. I think Whyte will be remembered for more than being just the first person to take Joshua past the 3rd. I think he’ll be remembered as the guy that exposed Joshua by showing how robotic and flawed he is as a heavyweight.
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