By Scott Gilfoid: We all knew going into tonight’s fight between former WBA heavyweight champion David “Hayemaker” Haye (27-2, 25 KOs) and #10 WBA Mark De Mori (30-2-2, 26 KOs) that we were going to see a likely mismatch with Haye wiping the deck with the over-matched 33-year-old De Mori, and sure enough that’s exactly what we witnessed.
Haye needed less than a full round to take the Australian De Mori out in the 1st round at the O2 Arena in London, UK. De Mori made the mistake of throwing a slow jab with his back against the ropes. Haye immediately throw a big right hand counter of De Mori’s jab and clocked him.
Haye quickly landed two more shots that left De Mori on the canvas with both eyes closed and his right arm outstretched. De Mori appeared to be totally unconscious for several moments. The fight was immediately stopped and oxygen administered to the hurt De Mori. Afterwards, Haye spoke of his punching power, saying that no heavyweight in the division would have been able to tke the shots that De Mori was getting hit with tonight.
“I’m punching harder than ever. De Mori is a tough guy and I felt so cool and calm in there, I don’t think any heavyweight on the planet could take those punches,” Haye said. “I’m hitting harder than I’ve ever hit before and I think this new improved version of me will go on and win heavyweight championships. It felt like home. I had no nerves. This is where I belong.”
Let me touch on the subject of Haye bragging about no heavyweight being able to take his punching power. I beg to differ. I think plenty of heavyweights would be able to take Haye’s power punches tonight. My question is why would they need to take Haye’s punches in the first place? I mean, the quality heavyweights like Deontay Wilder wouldn’t be dumb enough to take Haye’s shots in the first place.
You’re not going to see Deontay Wilder throwing a lazy jab while backed up against the ropes the way we saw with De Mori. That was just a really non-thinking move by De Mori. First off, you don’t back up to the corner against a fast fighter like Haye, because he’s always done well against fighters when he gets them against the ropes. The second thing is you do not throw lazy jabs, period.
De Mori seemed to stop thinking when he got to the corner. Maybe De Mori was lulled into throwing a slow jab after seeing Haye stick his arm out in front of him and holding it in that position moments before. De Mori seemed to throw a jab with the same slow movement that Haye had done. It was a mistake for De Mori not to nail Haye with a big right hand when he held his left outstretches the way he did. But it was even more of a mistake for De Mori to throw a slow jab. That was not a good thing for him to do because it enabled Haye to counter him with a right to the head to hurt him.
“I want to unify the heavyweight division. I set my plan out to do that many years ago and I fell short,” Haye said. “I’m going to make a serious run at this heavyweight division. There are titles all over the place at the moment and it’ll take someone like me to clean it up.”
I think Haye needs to back off with the talk of unifying the heavyweight division. He needs to come back down to Earth and realize that he just beat a fringe contender in De Mori, who arguably shouldn’t have even been ran ked in the top 15 to begin with.
I could understand Haye yapping about unifying the heavyweight title if he’d beaten an actual world champion like Ruslan Chagaev, Tyson Fury or Deontay Wilder, but that’s not what he did tonight. Haye merely beat a bottom feeder in De Mori, who has been dining on 2nd tier fodder his entire career.
Yeah, De Mori has a great record, but when you remove the fodder opposition from his record, he’s got a 0-1 record. You can’t count all his wins because they all came against weak opposition. As such, Haye needs to wait until he beats at least one world champion before he starts crowing about how he’s going to unify the division.
“It’s been absolutely amazing. I’d like to thank each and every fan,” said Haye. “I assumed a lot of people would give up on me given my physical state in the last few years, but the fact that people have come out and supported me – it’s been a tough, tough road, but I’m finally back and I feel better than ever. It feels better than it was before. I’ve spent two years on rehab on this shoulder, building all the muscles and I’m so strong now. Tyson Fury is pretty clear about not wanting to fight me. I said I’ll work my way up the rankings, and he said he’d relinquish the belts instead of fight me so why bother (pursuing him)? Why not go for bigger, better fights? A bigger fight’s Anthony Joshua. I believe that fight can be made later on in the year. I’m in shape, I’m punching hard. I’m a little bit older. It’ll make for a great fight. That’s the type of fight I want, that’s why I’m back in boxing. It’s the big fights, I need that. Fury’s a good fighter. You don’t go to Germany and do what he did (in beating Wladimir Klitschko). It’s a shame he doesn’t want to fight me but I think we all know why when you see power like that,” Haye said.
Haye will likely get a fight against Anthony Joshua later this year, but he can forget all about fighting Tyson Fury, because that is definitely not going to happen. Haye burned his bridges for a potential fight against Fury after pulling out of two fights against him in the past. I don’t think Fury wants to experience that again.
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