By Scott Gilfoid: Former two division world champion David Haye (26-2, 24 KOs) figures that he’s at least two fights away from a potential clash against unbeaten British/Commonwealth heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (15-0, 15 KOs).
Haye thinks the fight is possible in 2016 against Joshua if they both win their next two fights, but he’s not sure if Joshua will go after a world title soon. Joshua could try and fight the winner of the Charles Martin vs. Vyacheslav Glazkov fight for the IBF heavyweight title. Joshua is also ranked #2 by the WBC.
Haye, 35, shouldn’t be thinking about a fight against Joshua or anyone else right now, because he has an important fight this month against #10 WBA Mark De Mori (30-1-2, 26 KOs) on January 16th at the O2 Arena in London, UK. That may have been an easy fight for Haye years ago when he was in his prime, but right now it could be a very difficult fight for him because he hasn’t fought since 2012. Haye is coming off of a nearly four year layoff, and it’s asking a lot for an old, small and inactive heavyweight like Haye to breeze through anybody at this point, let alone an actual contender.
“A fight with Anthony Joshua is one the British public would love to see later on in 2016,” Haye said to the dailymail.co.uk. “Eddie Hearn made a lot of noise about a big summer showdown. We both have to have a couple of fights before that can realistically happen. I have to get De Mori out of the way and maybe have another fight in March, April or May but then we can sit down and talk about a big showdown,” Haye said.
The fact that Haye is already looking for a fight against Joshua tells me that he’s just looking for a quick cash out fight rather than hunting for a world title shot. I’m sure that Haye would jump at the chance to fight for a world title, but I doubt that he wants to work hard to get the title shot. It’s going to take Haye a considerable amount of time before he gets a shot at a world title, because I think he’s going to need to become a No.1 mandatory challenger before he gets a crack at a title. I don’t see any of the champions just giving Haye a world title fight off of a victory over De Mori. No way.
Haye is going to need to likely work his way to a No.1 spot and beat at least one or two live bodies to get him to that spot. It would help matters if Haye would fight better opposition that De Mori if he wants to get ranked quickly. I mean, if Haye is just going to fight bottom feeders in the heavyweight division, then I can see him hanging around for a long, long time before he eventually gets to a No.1 mandatory spot and he might be nearing 40 by the time that happens because I don’t think the sanctioning bodies are going to give him an elevated ranking based off of wins over horrible fodder opposition.
“But that’s totally dependent on the route he [Joshua] wants to go down,” Haye said about Joshua. “He might be looking at trying to gatecrash one of the titles which you could understand.”
If De Mori has any kind of a chin, he could take enough of Haye’s big shots early in the fight to wear him down and get to him in the second half of the fight. I could see that happening. Even in his prime, Haye was mostly dangerous early in his fights in the first few rounds. Haye hasn’t fought a good opponent since his loss to Wladimir Klitschko in 2011.
You can’t count Haye’s fight against Dereck Chisora in 2012, because that was against a poor opponent. As such, we don’t know how Haye will look against De Mori, because its been so many years since the 35-year-old Haye fought a live body. Frankly, I’ll be very surprised if Haye doesn’t get knocked out by De Mori in this fight because he’s definitely an old lion at this point. Just looking at the bags under Haye’s eyes, it makes me wonder if he’s been taking care of himself in the last few years while inactive.
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