By Scott Gilfoid: Eddie Hearn plans on matching Tony Bellew (29-2-1, 19 KOs) up against WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker (24-0, 19 KOs) if he gets past David Haye (28-3, 26 KOs) in their fight on December 17 at the O2 Arena in London, England.
Despite Bellew being the underdog in the Haye rematch, Hearn still believes he’ll beat his fighter will rise up and defeat him. Hearn doesn’t see the 34-year-old Bellew’s win over Haye last March as being a fluke thing caused by an Achilles injury the Hayemaker suffered. Hearn says the injury was caused by a combination of Haye being older and being forced to fight at a pace that his aging body could no longer sustain.
Hearn might be having Bellew walk the plank if he puts him in with Joseph Parker. I mean, the only reason Bellew didn’t lose to Haye was because of an injury. The only way Bellew beats Haye again is with him suffering another injury of some kind. Parker is only 25. He’s not likely to get injured in a fight against Bellew. Without an injury to help him, Bellew is going to be in a world of hurt against Parker unless he uses the Hughie Fury blueprint in how to fight the New Zealand fighter. Hughie survived against Parker by running for 12 rounds and clinching at every opportunity. 2 of the judges did a great job of scoring the Parker-Fury fight by scoring it 118-110. Not surprisingly, Hearn thought it was a close fight, which puts him in the same boat at the judge that scored the fight a draw at 114-114. Bellew would have to try and spoil for 12 rounds and hope he gets judges that score the fight favorably for him to beat Parker in my opinion.
Like with his new addition to his Matchroom Sport team middleweight Daniel Jacobs, Hearn is looking past Bellew’s next fight with Haye and envisioning him fighting for the WBO heavyweight title next against the 25-year-old Parker and beating him as well. Hearn isn’t saying what the endgame is for Bellew if he beats both Haye and Parker. Bellew has shown little interest in mixing it up with IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua and WBC champion Deontay Wilder. It could be that Bellew doesn’t want to press his luck and wind up knocked out old by either of them. Parker, 6’4”, would seem to be more than big enough to do the job on Bellew before he’d even need to make a decision on whether to take his career into uncharted waters and face Wilder or Joshua.
“Go and beat David Haye and end his career,” said Hearn to Behind the Gloves in talking about the goal for his fighter Bellew in the Haye fight. “That’s what he’ll be looking to do, and that’s what I believe he’ll do. He’s a better fighter. Tony Bellew can take David Haye’s power. That doesn’t mean he can’t get knocked out. He can out-box him. Haye is still the favorite, but people realize this is a real fight,”
The theme of sending fighters into retirement seems to be getting played out a little too much lately with different fighters. But when you have a promoter now blabbering about his fighter sending another guy into retirement, it just seems a little off putting. Hearn needs to let Bellew do the trash talking about sending Haye retirement, if that’s truly his goal. Bellew can’ take credit for his win over Haye on March 4 of this year because it was caused by an injury that he sustained in round 6 of that fight. Hearn says when boxing fans say Bellew’s win wasn’t legit due to Haye suffering an injury, he looks at the record books and points out that it shows that his fighter won by an 11th round TKO. That makes Hearn feel better. But the fact of the matter is, Bellew wouldn’t have won the fight against Haye if not for the injury. Bellew was losing the fight up until Haye hurt his leg. The odds of another injury of that nature taking place to Haye are extremely remote. If Haye is going to suffer a terrible injury like a torn Achilles, it will likely take place during training camp well before he gets inside the ring with Bellew. By the time Haye faces Bellew, he’ll have been threw a lot of hard sparring. If an injury is going to occur, it’ll probably happen in training camp for Haye. The fight would then need to be postponed or canceled depending on how bad the injury is.
”I think Haye’s timing was off. I thought he was sloppy,” said Hearn. ”I’m not sure his body can hold up for 12 rounds any on. Bellew’s confidence for this fight is sky high. I believe Haye’s confidence is rock bottom,” said Hearn.
I do agree with what Hearn says about Haye being sloppy with and ring rusty in the Bellew fight last March. Haye had been out of the ring for 10 months at the time he took the fight with Bellew. Before that, Haye had fought just 3 rounds in his short fights against Arnold Gjergjai and Mark de Mori. Those were total mismatches. Before those 2 fights, Haye had been out of the ring for nearly 4 years from 2012 to 2016. With all that inactivity, it’s no surprise that Haye’s timing was off and he looked sloppy against Bellew. But a good training camp by Haye should remove much of the ring rust. The main thing is Haye’s punching power is the same, and his hand speed near the same. Even if Haye has lost a percentage of his speed, he’s still going to be the much faster fighter when he gets inside the ring with Bellew. Where Haye went wrong against Bellew is he would give up after missing with a right hand. Bellew would move away to keep from getting hit by Haye. Bellew did this from time to time in his loss to Adonis Stevenson in 2013. Stevenson would close the distance once again and make sure he landed his second punch. Haye would have had a very good chance if he just went to war in the 1st round and took whatever shots that he had to take at close range to get the knockout. Staying on the outside and throwing single pot shots was not a smart plan for Haye to use against Bellew. Reducing the fight to a single pot shot battle is playing into Bellew’s hands. He wants the fight to be fought at a slow pace, because it favors him.
”He looked nervous at the face off. He looked like he was about to cry,” said Hearn about the faceoff between Bellew and Haye on Wednesday. ”I don’t think his confidence is there. I expect him to win this fight and I expect him to win it well,” said Hearn about Bellew. “If he fights again after the David Haye fight, it’ll be against Joseph Parker for the WBO world title, and I believe he’ll beat him,” said Hearn.
It sounds like a pipe dream from Hearn with him seeing Bellew beating Haye and then beating Joseph Parker too. I’m just wondering why Hearn stopped with Parker. Why didn’t he go further by saying Bellew would clean out the entire heavyweight division from top to bottom by beating Deontay Wilder and Anthony Joshua.
I didn’t see Haye looking emotional in his faceoff with Bellew. Haye just stared at Bellew blankly during the face to face. If anything, Haye looked bored like it was something he’d done many times before. Hearn seems to saying stuff in the media to try and get under Haye’s skin. By saying that Haye looked like he was ready to cry during the faceoff with Bellew, it’s going to cause a lot of boxing fans to react to what Hearn is saying and believe him without checking for themselves to see if he was on the level about it. I’ve now seen the Bellew-Haye faceoff several times, and I can’t detect any signs that Haye was about to start blubbering like Hearn says. Like I said, Haye looked bored and detached. I don’t put too much weight in face-offs and mind games outside of the ring. Bellew looked like he had Adonis Stevenson timid during their face off, and we saw what happened in that fight. Stevenson thrashed Bellew royally in knocking him out in 6 rounds. If doing a great job during a faceoff was what boxing was all about, then we’d have a sport ruled by a lot of mediocre fighters, because it’s often the B-side fighters doing the better job during face-offs.
“David Haye seemed nervous, particularly in the head to head. He seemed quite emotional,” said Hearn to IFL TV in continuing with his theme that Bellew will beat Haye because he looked nervous during the faceoff. “Tony is very different, very calm, very in control. This is one of the great fighters in the heavyweight division. Trust me when I say, Tony Bellew will do the business again. For us it wasn’t a fluke. For this fight, I’ll be disappointed if we don’t win this fight. This time, we’re going to win. Before Haye got injured, he couldn’t hit Tony. Do we want to win a world championship? Yes, but this is a massive fight. We’ll beat Haye and then we’ll fight Parker. That’s really what we want to do, beat Haye and fight Joseph Parker. Tony Bellew is setting himself up for a wonderful life. This is about proving people wrong again,” said Hearn.
I hate to rain on Hearn’s parade, but Bellew’s win over Haye was a fluke in my opinion. Before Haye was injured, he was winning the fight with his jab. The only thing Bellew was doing was trying to make Haye miss. You don’t win a fight by making your opponent miss with his power shots while eating jabs repeatedly. Belllew could not get out of the way of Haye’s jab. The offense from Bellew was nonexistent except for one round before the 6th. I had Haye winning 4 rounds to 1 going into the 6th. Bellew wouldn’t let his hands go for fear of being countered by one of Haye’s big right hands.