By Scott Gilfoid: In what turned out to be a horrible mismatch, former two division world champion David Haye (27-2, 25 KOs) destroyed #10 WBA Mark De Mori (30-2-2, 26 KOs) in the 1st round of Haye’s comeback fight on Saturday night at the O2 Arena in London, England. The fight was officially stopped by referee Bob Williams at 2:11 of the 1st round.
Haye dropped De Mori after nailing him with two hard right hands to the head followed by a left hook. The fight was then halted as De Mori was too hurt to get back to his feet.
De Mori, 33, fought a stupid fight by choosing to backup against the ropes and letting Haye tee off on him. It was too easy. With De Mori playing sparring partner, Haye just went at it in landing a hard right to the head that caused De Mori to lower his head.
Haye then nailed De Mori with a clubbing rabbit shot to the back of the head. At that point, De Mori started to fall down. Haye then landed a glancing left hook to the head.
Overall, Haye looked pretty good for a fighter that has been out of the ring for three and a half years. Haye looked big and powerful at 227lbs, and seemed to be carrying the weight pretty well.
The one negative about Haye’s performances was the many times he missed with his power shots. Haye was pretty wild out there.
After the fight, Haye said “I’m punching harder than ever. I don’t think any heavyweight in the planet could take those kinds of punches. I’m hitting harder than I ever was before. I think this proved that it will lead me to being the heavyweight champion of the world. I couldn’t see any heavyweight take those kinds of shots for 10 rounds. Next time, I want to get someone tougher, taller. I want to get up there in the rankings fast. I would love a big fight against Anthony Joshua later in the year. I believe that’s a great fight to take. That’s the type of fight I want,” Haye said.
I'm back! Thank you to all the fans for coming to #HayeDay #AintNoStoppingUsNow pic.twitter.com/2UCqUYTuit
— David Haye (@mrdavidhaye) January 16, 2016
When asked who he wants to fight next, Haye wasn’t ready to name any names. He said “I’ll be looking at the rankings, and seeing who’s available to fight. We’ll find someone,” Haye said.
Haye ruled out a fight against IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, as he says that Fury has already said that he doesn’t want to fight him. Haye said that he thinks Fury doesn’t want to fight him because of his big punching power.
It’s impossible to get much from watching tonight’s fight between Haye and De Mori, because it was such a terrible mismatch to begin with. The things that I noticed about the match-up was how De Mori was too timid to let his hands go. He wasn’t jabbing, he wasn’t moving, and he kept backing up against the ropes. It was not a brilliant fight by De Mori. These are things that De Mori and his trainer should have worked on in training camp for this fight. A.) use your jab. B.) move around a lot. C.) DO NOT back up against the ropes.
Haye did look very powerful when throwing his right hand. His left hook was less of a weapon in this fight, however. Most of the damage that Haye did was with him using his right hand. I don’t think Haye is anymore powerful than he was before. I didn’t see that. Haye had the perfect opponent for him to look good against in De Mori, who arguably shouldn’t even be ranked in the top 15 in the heavyweight division. The World Boxing Association gave Haye a gift by ranking De Mori so highly.
When Haye faces a taller fighter in the 6’6 to 6’7″ range like Deontay Wilder or Anthony Joshua, I suspect Haye will have the same problems against those guys than he did in his loss to Wladimir Klitschko five years ago. Haye does well against guys his own size or shorter, but he does not seem comfortable at all when fighting the taller fighters that can hit him while he’s coming forward. In that respect, Haye is a lot like Wladimir. The Ukrainian is comfortable when fighting smaller guys, but not comfortable when having to deal with the taller fighters.
Comments are closed.