By Scott Gilfoid: David Haye (28-2, 26 KOs) plans on thrashing cruiserweight Tony Bellew (28-2-1, 18 KOs) on Saturday night by doing a real destructive job on him in front of the boxing fans at the O2 Arena in London, England. While Bellew has done a great talking of talking as if he’s the favorite in this fight, the reality is he’s the underdog and has very little chance of winning aside from an injury to Haye. For a lot of boxing fans, they’re hoping that Bellew can make it out of the 1st round. To those fans, they see that as a major victory for Bellew if he can make it to the 2nd round. The fight is such a mismatch that many of the boxing fans aren’t even giving the stork-like Bellew even a sliver of a chance.
In Bellew’s recent surprising 3rd round knockout victory over Ilunga Makabu last year in May 2016 Liverpool, he lucked out when the South African fighter made a tactical mistake in backing against the ropes and covering up instead of staying in the center of the ring. Bellew unloaded on Makabu with a flurry of head shots to score a fast knockout.
Haye isn’t going to make a stupid mistake like that by turning himself into a human punching bag against the ropes. If Bellew is going to best Haye, he’ll need to do it in the center of the ring. That’s going to be difficult for Bellew to do because he’s so much slower of hand and foot than the 36-year-old Haye.
“Saturday night, you are seeing a real destructive job. Knocking him down for 10 seconds does nothing for me,” said Haye to skysports.com. “He has made things personal. If he wants to do that, I’ll make sure he never does that again. If he believes he can stop what I’m doing, he’s in for a world of hurt.”
Bellew seems to have stepped in it, hasn’t he? The 34-year-old Bellew had better be prepared to fight hard immediately in round 1 on Saturday night, because I think it’s going to end badly for him unless he lets his hands go right off the bat. Bellew needs to be swinging for the fences straightaway at the sound of the bell in round 1 cause if he’s not, he’ll be blasted out by the stronger, faster and more experienced Haye.
Bellew’s major problem in this fight, beside him being ill-suited for the heavyweight division, is the fact that he has no experience at heavyweight. Bellew is just some guy that ate his way to the cruiserweight division, and then beat 8 softer opponents to win the WBC title. The guy that Bellew beat at cruiserweight likely would have been blown out of the water by Haye’s last two opponents Arnold Gjergjaj and Mark De Mori in my estimation.
Without any experience at heavyweight, Bellew doesn’t have a ghost of a chance of beating Haye unless he gets lucky. Yeah, there’s a chance that Bellew could close his eyes and swing as hard as he can and catch Haye with a knockout shot on Saturday night, but I don’t see it happening.
Bellew doesn’t have the one-punch type of power for him to score a knockout of that type. Bellew’s knockouts usually occur when his opponents retreat to the ropes and cover up. I don’t know why a professional fighter would ever make foolish mistakes like that, but it happens. Bellew has to land a lot of punches against an immobile foe before he can finally get them out of there. With Haye not likely to play into the normal script for Bellew’s opposition, it’s very likely to end badly for the Liverpool native.
I’m just saying. If you look at how Adonis Stevenson defeated Bellew, he stayed in the center of the ring and used his hand speed to get the better of him. Oddly enough, it was Bellew who retreated to the ropes in round 6 and ended up getting stopped by a series of devastating power shots from Adonis. The final punches of the fight saw Bellew out on his feet but still standing, but with his head going every which way each time Stevenson would hail him. It was lucky for Bellew that the referee stepped in to pull Stevenson off of him, because he was on the verge of poleaxing him. The Canadian boxing fans were ecstatic at seeing Stevenson smash Bellew in such a clear manner. Like with the Haye fight, Bellew had done a great deal of trash talking, making some boxing fans believe that he was going to handle Stevenson. As it turned out, Bellew wasn’t even competitive with Stevenson. It was just a terrible mismatch, and the fans realized immediately that Bellew never had the talent to begin with to make a good fight of it. Unfortunately, the only thing that’s changed since then is Bellew moving up to cruiserweight and beating 8 mediocre fighters to win the WBC title.
“He said he wouldn’t beat the old David Haye, but the new David Haye is better than the old one,” said Haye.
Yeah, I agree with Haye. He’s more dangerous now with him having bulked up to 227 lbs. than he was when he was lighter and weighing just 210 lbs. fighting at heavyweight. Haye looks a lot better with him being heavier than he was from 2009 to 2012. I do think Bellew would have a TON of problems against Haye at 210 as well, but I think it’s a much tougher fight now. Some fighters don’t gain power when they add weight. Haye seems to be different. He looks a lot stronger now than he was when he was lighter.
That’s not good news for Bellew, because it means he’s going to need to limit the amount of times that Haye hits him with his bone-jarring shots. Bellew thinks Haye’s right hand isn’t as powerful as it once was due to him having shoulder surgery, but I don’t see much of any drop off. In watching Haye hit the mitts with his trainer Shane McGuigan this week, Haye’s right hand shots were thrown with a lot of power and they seemed to hurt him.