By Scott Gilfoid: In a sign that Tony ‘Bomber’ Bellew might be coming apart at the seams, he rudely shoved former heavyweight champion David Haye during their face off on Thursday at their final press conference. The security had to jump in before things escalated to another level.
The confidence that Bellew (29-2-1, 19 KOs) had shown during the early stages of the promotion for the rematch with Haye seems to have evaporated as the time has drawn nearer for the two heavyweights to face each other this Saturday night on Sky Box Office at the O2 Arena in London, UK. It’s always sad when a fighter realizes he’s out of his depth and he starts out acting out before he gets inside the ring. I think he we might be seeing that with Bellew. It’s so sad. It looks like Bellew is starting to realize what’s in store for him against Haye and he’s acting out and trying to resist his destiny. Unfortunately no amount of temper tantrums by Bellew is going to change what happens on Saturday. If he doesn’t have the talent to beat a 100 percent healthy Haye, the fight is going to be over with quickly.
Bellew has a great personality but he’s not quite a world championship level fighter, is he? The difference in pedigree between Bellew and Haye is wide enough to drive a truck through it. Bellew reminds me of Joe Smith Jr. I see him as that type of cruiserweight/heavyweight. He’s got decent power, but he’s so flawed. Without Haye suffering an injury on Saturday, Bellew will surely lose.
Bellew thinks Haye has had his time and he’s done with at 37. He says he’s going to finish him off. Haye openly admits that if he loses to Bellew on Saturday, it’s over with for him. Bellew isn’t saying the same thing, but it doesn’t matter. It will be over with for Bellew. His promoter Eddie Hearn isn’t going to be able to do much with him other than try and put together a third Haye-Bellew fight, which I doubt will sell. If Bellew gets smashed to bits by Haye on Saturday, a third fight between them would be forlorn and seen as a pathetic attempt at a money grab by the boxing fans.
“David has never shown that he is a 12-round fighter who gets stronger in his whole life,” Bellew said to skysports.com. “Boxing is a sport where fighters do not get better as they get older. It has never happened. George Foreman? Bernard Hopkins? No. It always ends badly.”
Haye responded with this comment to Bellew when he started talking about his age:
“You seemed to get better as you got older? How old were you when you won a world title? You failed up to that point.”
Haye has a good point. Bellew had come up empty during his career in two failed world title shots against Nathan Cleverly and Adonis Stevenson until meeting up with Illunga Makabu in May 2016 to fight for the vacant WBC light heavyweight title. That was a situation where the WBC made it easy by ranking the flawed Makabu at the top of the WBC’s top 15 above the arguably far more talented Mairis Briedis. It was a crazy ranking because Makabu had never shown the kind of talent to be ranked above Briedis. Bellew was able to take advantage of the WBC’s high ranking of Makabu to capture the vacant WBC cruiserweight title. The WBC then moved Briedis up to No1 in their rankings. But instead of Bellew defending against Briedis, which he should have done, he chose to defend against #14 WBC BJ Flores. That was Bellew’s only defense of his WBC title before moving up to heavyweight to fight Haye last year. Did Bellew swerve the Briedis fight? It looks that way to some boxing fans. After seeing how hard of a fight Briedis gave Usyk in their semifinals match in the WBSS, it’s a good thing that Bellew moved up to heavyweight. Briedis would have been a real problem for Bellew if he had stayed at cruiserweight and defended his WBC strap against him.
Hopkins and Foreman were both able to fight at a high level into their 40s. Haye is only 37, so he could still have a lot left in the tank depending on who he’s matched against. It’s obviously silly for Haye to be put in with 250 pound heavyweights like Anthony Joshua, but he’s got the size, speed and power to beat a lot of the other heavyweights if he can make it through his training camps in one piece without suffering a bad injury that he brings into the fight.
Bellew shoving Haye at the press conference is not a good sign. The way Bellew lashed out at Haye physically seems to be a sign of frustration at realizing possibly that things are not going to go well for him on Saturday night when the two step inside the squared circle to get it on. Bellew was supposed to be little more than cannon fodder for Haye last year in their first fight on March 4, 2017, but a bad Achilles injury to the Haymaker turned the fight around and saved the ‘Bomber.’
It could be that Bellew realizes that he really stepped in it this time and he’s about to get a royal thrashing on the night. Goodness knows, there will be a lot of boxing fans that will be tuning in to see the Haye-Bellew 2 fight worldwide, and a brutal knockout loss for the 34-year-old Bellew could be the end of his career. Yeah, Bellew’s promoter Eddie Hearn would surely try and throw together a third fight between Haye and Bellew, because what else can he do? Hearn won’t be able to scare up interest from the British boxing fans if he sets up a fight between Bellew and one of the younger heavyweights like Dillian Whyte, and it would be insane for him to match him against the winner of the World Boxing Super Series cruiserweight tournament between Murat Gassiev and Oleksandr Usyk. The fans would rebel and resist the idea of Bellew getting a fight against one of those guys with him coming off of a knockout loss to Haye. As such, Bellew’s career is pretty much on the line on Saturday, because I don’t think Hearn will be able to do anything with him if he gets blasted to smithereens by the 37-year-old Haye.
“I showed respect, purely for what he did for me. I gave that back by doing this fight,” Bellew said. “I didn’t need to give David a rematch. He was so smarmy, arrogant and cocky that he didn’t put a rematch clause in the contract.”
Bellew gave Haye a rematch obviously because it was the biggest money fight available to him short of a title fight with heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua. There’s nobody else for Bellew to fight that would have given him the kind of money he could make fighting Haye. Moreover, Bellew was in a situation where he would likely only get one shot for a big payday.
If Bellew takes on a tough heavyweight contender or someone like Usyk or Gassiev, he’d probably lose badly AND make far less money than he would against Haye. If Bellew could be counted on to beat the best fighters at cruiserweight and heavyweight, then it wouldn’t be bad for him to have moved on and not fought Haye in a rematch, because he still would have made good money eventually against someone. But Bellew isn’t that type of fighter, and for that reason it was very important that he fight Haye a second time. Bellew has that one chance for a big cash out payday. Haye provides that opportunity for him.
