By Scott Gilfoid: Well, the January 16th, David Haye (26-2, 24 KOs) vs. Mark De Mori (30-1-2, 26 KOs) card just got arguably a little weaker with the former featherweight strap holder Billy Dib (39-4, 23 KOs) suffering an injury that has caused him to pull out of the card at the O2 Arena in London, England. This was supposed to be the co-feature bout.
To be honest, Dib wasn’t a great choice to begin with, given that he’d lost 3 out of his last 7 fights. I mean, that’s not exactly someone whose career is going swimmingly, is it? Dib had been knocked out in his last fight in 3 rounds by Takashi Miura last year in May 2015, and he hadn’t fought since then. Dib was supposed to fight journeyman Jamie Speight (13-8, 1 KOs) in a 10 round bout.
The undercard needs some serious help my view. It’s too bad Haye couldn’t get super middleweight George Groves for the undercard, because his mismatch against Andrea Di Luisa would be perfect for the co-feature bout. Groves is fighting Di Luisa later this month on January 30th at the Copper Box Arena in London, UK. Groves is kind of in the same boat in fighting on a card that is kind of barren in terms of talent and big names. It’s unfortunate that these two cards couldn’t have been merged into one with some of the lesser talent trimmed off the card so that there was some fairly interesting fights for the paying fans that will be coming to see the fights.
As of right now, here are the fights on the Haye vs. De Mori undercard:
John O’Donnell vs. Shayne Singleton
Tony Dodson vs. Richard Horton
Kay Prospere vs. Lee Connelly
Jose Lopes vs. Darren Snow
Wadi Camacho vs. Jindrich Velecky
Josh Kennedy vs. TBA
“It is with great regret that I announce I’ve been ruled out of my fight to an injury I suffered during training camp,” Dib said via ESPN.com. “Big thanks to all the amazing boxing fans in the UK. God willing I’ll be back soon.”
According to ESPN, Hayemaker Promotions still hasn’t setup a television deal for the card. The card could be streamed on YouTube.
Haye, 35, will be fighting for the first time in 3 1/5 years, when he faces the 33-year-old De Mori on 1/16. Haye picked out a guy that is technically a top 10 contender in the Australian De Mori, but he has what I see as an inflated ranking to the extreme. I don’t rate De Mori as a top 10 contender in the heavyweight division. To be honest, I don’t even rate De Mori as a top 15 guy. I see him as a bottom 50 contender.
Haye obviously has done his homework well in scouting De Mori out before deciding that he was the perfect opponent for him to fight. The World Boxing Association’s ranking is pretty mixed up, because three of the guys that are ranked below De Mori, Anthony Joshua, Joseph Parker and Kubrat Pulev, would likely make easy work of him if given the chance. It’s very confusing when you see guys like De Mori ranked above those fighters.
I expect Haye to defeat De Mori on January 16th, but I doubt that he’ll look good in doing so. Haye is now an old lion at 35, and he’s been out of the sport for just too long for him to come back and be anything close to the fighter he was years ago. I mean, we’re talking about a fighter that hasn’t fought since 2012, and hasn’t fought a quality opponent since 2011. If Haye was a checkers champion in the past, you couldn’t expect him to come back and dominate the sport of checkers after nearly four years of being away. It’s even more difficult with boxing, because the sport is a young man’s sport. Getting past a limited fighter like De Mori is one thing, but once Haye tries to tackle anyone better than this guy, I see him coming unglued at the seams and losing badly. However, I don’t think that’s a worry for him. I suspect Haye’s main goal is to just get one big cash out fight against the likes of Anthony Joshua, Wladimir Klitschko, Tyson Fury or Deontay Wilder. After that, I see Haye disappearing again for years and years.
Comments are closed.