Haye taking it easy preparing for Bellew

By Boxing News - 02/08/2017 - Comments

Image: Haye taking it easy preparing for Bellew

By Scott Gilfoid: David Haye (28-2, 26 KOs) doesn’t appear to be working hard in preparing for his fight in less than four weeks against cruiserweight Tony Bellew (28-2-1, 18 KOs) on March 4 at the O2 Arena in London, England. This week, Haye posted photos of himself relaxing in a Jacuzzi on what appears to be a beautiful yacht.

Haye had a drink of some sort in his hands. In another photo, Haye is shooting baskets. It doesn’t appear that he’s worried at all about his fight against the 33-year-old Bellew, and that’s quite understandable. The fight is perceived to be a huge mismatch of major proportions.

Bellew has never fought at heavyweight, and he’s not even really proven himself at cruiserweight against the talented fighters. Bellew is technically the WBC cruiserweight champion, but he won the title against a fighter named Ilunga Makabu, who isn’t considered to be in the same league as the talented fighters in the cruiserweight division like Murat Gassiev, Oleksandr Usyk, Marco Huck, Denis Lebedev, Mairis Briedis, Krzystof Glowacki, Dmitry Kudryashov, and Beibut Shumenov.

Only the World Boxing Council knows why they ranked Makabu at the top of their division for a fight against Bellew rather than one of the above mentioned talented fighters. I don’t understand why either of those fighters was allowed to fight for the WBC’s vacant cruiserweight title rather than the talented contenders. As such, the WBC has what many boxing fans see as a paper champion in Bellew as their title holder rather than a solid fighter like Glowacki or Usyk holding their belt.

Bellew is likely to vacate his WBC cruiserweight title no matter what happens in his fight against Haye next month. Bellew is promoted by Eddie Hearn, the same promoter that promotes IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua. What that means is that Bellew very well could get a title shot against Joshua in the near future if he puts a handful of wins together and gets at least some kind of ranking in the top 15 at heavyweight.

Even if Bellew gets a bottom ranking at number 15, I see that as all it takes for him to get a title shot against Joshua. We’re probably talking about the Joshua-Bellew fight taking place in 2018 at the earliest, but I definitely see that happening. Hearn recently said that Joshua will be fighting only the tough fights from now on. I don’t believe that for a second. I see Joshua being forced to take a tough fight soon against Luis Ortiz, but his next fight against 41-year-old Wladimir Klitschko isn’t a tough one in my book. It’s another mismatch. I think Hearn will match Bellew against Joshua by 2018 if not 2017.

Haye has got it so easy with him fighting Bellew next month on Sky Box Office PPV. The only way Haye can lose that fight in my opinion is if he gets nailed with a low blow the way that BJ Flores did in his fight against Bellew on October 15 last year. Flores was hurt by a low blow that for some reason the referee didn’t see, even though it was painfully obvious that he’d been hit low. Instead of Bellew backing off and giving Flores a breather after he’d been hit low, he poured it on and ended up taking him out in the 3rd round.

If Haye gets nailed with a low blow in a similar manner, I could see him getting stopped. If the referee is not seeing what’s happening inside the ring, then we could see a similar outcome as the Bellew-Flores fight. I just hope that a good referee is working the fight, because they’re supposed to be able to see low blows when they’re thrown directly in front of their faces. I think Haye is going to knock Bellew out so fast that there won’t be any chance for him to get his offense untracked. I don’t think Haye is going to let Bellew do anything before he knocks him out in either the 1st or 2nd round. I personally think Bellew will be knocked out in the 1st round no matter what he does in the fight.

Hopefully, Haye upgrades the level of his competition after he beats Bellew, because this arguably a step down for him from his last two fights against Arnold Gjergjai and Mark De Mori. You’d like to see Haye facing better opposition with each fight rather than him going downwards. I think Bellew is a fine fringe level cruisereight, but definitely not a champion level fighter, even though he holds the WBC strap. Bellew is not a heavyweight, and that much will be clear on March 4 when he gets inside the ring with Haye and is quickly taken out in one or two rounds.

Khurtsidze rumored to be taking step aside money to let Saunders fight a major fight

#1 WBO contender Avtandil Khurtsidze is said to be on the verge of taking a step aside fee to allow WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders to fight someone in “a major fight next,” according to ringtv.com. Khurtsidze, 37, will be fighting for the interim World Boxing Organization middleweight title while Saunders takes his big fight against some big name. It’ll be interesting to see who this big name is. Could it be Miguel Cotto? We just saw Cotto’s February 25 fight wiped out after his opponent James Kirkland was injured during training camp. I’m not sure that a fight between Cotto and Saunders would be a marketable one in the U.S.

Other than Cotto, unbeaten 2012 Olympic gold medalist Ryota Murata (12-0, 9 KOs) is a possibility for Saunders, but I fail to see how that fight would be considered a big fight. Murata is not a big name in boxing, and he seems to have a fairly simple style that would make him vulnerable against the talents in the middleweight division. Of course, that might be all the reason in the world for Saunders to fight Murata.

There’s also the possibility that Saunders could face Saul “Canelo” Alvarez after he beats Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. on May 6. It’s seen as a forgone conclusion by many boxing fans that Canelo will easily beat the ring rusty Chavez Jr. in their fight on HBO PPV. Canelo has to face someone in his next fight after Chavez Jr. and it sure doesn’t seem likely to me that he’s going to want any part of mixing it up with Gennady Golovkin in September like his promoter Oscar De La Hoya has been talking about. I don’t see Golovkin getting a crack at Canelo until he’s old, gray and no longer cogent. Boxing is a business, and I think Golden Boy is only matching Canelo against fighters in business fights rather than sporting fights.

In other words, Golden Boy is matching Canelo against fighters that they feel he can beat. Saunders would be a very, very beatable opponent for Canelo to pick up and easy title against. Once Canelo has the WBO middleweight title from Saunders, he can use that belt as leverage to get an even bigger slice of the pie for what would be a unification fight against Golovkin. I wouldn’t be surprised if Golovkin were offered a 90-10 split for a fight against Canelo once he has the WBO title in his possession.

Golovkin won’t have much room to bargain. Golovkin would also be a possibility for Saunders’ next fight, but I see him as a lower possibility because he’s not a PPV attraction in the U.S. You can’t see Golovkin-Saunders to the U.S public the way that Canelo-Saunders would be sold. The reason why Canelo can get away with fighting Saunders on HBO PPV and Golovkin can’t is because Canelo can stage that fight on the Mexican Independence Day holiday weekend in September, and get a lot of passive PPV buys without him having to fight a popular fighter.

Canelo’s loyal boxing fans will purchase his fight during the holiday weekend in September no matter who he fights in my view. I don’t think it matters if Canelo fights Golovkin or not. Canelo will still be able to bring in a lot of PPV buys by fighting a little known champion like Saunders on HBO PPV. We’re probably talking about 300,000 PPV buys on HBO for Canelo-Saunders, which is about the same amount that Canelo vs. Liam Smith brought in last year on September 17 on the Mexican Independence Day holiday weekend.

Without that fight taking place on a holiday, I think Canelo would have been lucky to bring in 100,000 buys, because Liam Smith was another little known champion. De La Hoya tried telling the boxing media that Liam Smith was the best fighter in the 154lb division, but few believed that. Canelo vs. Saunders will be an awful fight to watch in my opinion, because has looked so bad in his last two fights. I was hoping to see Saunders face Khurtsidze so that we could see him perform against a good fighter for a change. But it doesn’t look like he’s going to be doing that.

If all he’s going to do is wait around for a fight against Canelo or Golovkin, then I see it as a cash out move on his part. It’ll be interesting to see if the World Boxing Organization lets Saunders sit idle while waiting for Canelo and Golovkin to get freed up. In the case of Golovkin, he won’t have to wait too long, because he’s fighting next month on March 18 against Daniel Jacobs. But if Saunders is going to wait until the Canelo vs. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. fight takes place on May 6, then he’s going to be sitting on his WBO title for a long, long time without defending it again.

A fight between Canelo and Saunders likely wouldn’t take place until September, which would mean that Saunders would be out of the ring for 9 months before he defends his WBO title. Saunders is coming off of a 12 month layoff in defending his WBO title for the first time last December against Artur Akavov. It was a dreadful performance by Saunders in winning a very close 12 round decision that could have easily gone the other way.