By Tim Royner: David Haye (28-3, 26 KOs) has really kept it low key in the trash talking department in promoting his rematch with Tony Bellew (29-2-1, 19 KOs) set for this Saturday night, because he believes that by keeping his emotions under control that he can win the fight and avenge his loss from last year in March.
In that fight, Haye lost by an 11th round knockout because of an Achilles injury that he sustained in round 6. Before Haye suffered the injury, he appeared to be ahead in the fight 4 rounds to 1. Haye had lost the first round, but then he came back to control rounds 2, 3 and 4 using his jab. In round 6, things went to pieces for Haye after he injured his Achilles. Bellew capitalized on the injury and went to win the fight against the one-legged Haye.
You can argue that boxing needs Haye to win more than Bellew, because he is more dynamic fighter at heavyweight, and he stands a much better chance of making something happen against the better heavyweights in the division. Bellew was purely defensive against Haye last year before the injury. There no offense at all from Bellew, which is understandable because he doesn’t have the power to compete against good heavyweights.
If Bellew wins due to another Haye injury, he’s not going to be able to compete against the top heavyweights and have a chance to win because he’s too slender, weak and slow for the division. If Bellew’s promoter Eddie Hearn put him in with a transition heavyweight like Adam Kownacki or Dillian Whyte, he’d likely lose to both by knockout.
Even someone lower ranked like Dereck Chisora, Carlos Takam and Johan Duhaupas would all likely be way too big and powerful for Bellew. You can say the same thing if Haye fought them. He would have a chance to beat them. That’s why it’s in the best of boxing for Haye to win this fight on Saturday, because he can go somewhere in the division. Bellew can’t. Without his opponents suffering bad injuries, Bellew loses to pretty much all the top contenders in the heavyweight division in my estimation.
It seems like Haye blames his loss to Bellew on his emotional outbursts in the press conferences before his fight last year on May 4. I don’t know if Haye, 37, is superstitious or what, but he seems to blame the loss on the way he was angered by Bellew’s trash talking. That’s not the reason why Haye lost the fight. The injury was the cause that led up to Haye losing. We’ll never know for sure how a healthy Haye would have done in that fight. The only thing we can say is Haye had a firm control in the fight in the first 5 rounds before he was injured in round 6.
“The last guy that Bellew boxed wasn’t David Haye. I don’t know who it was. At no stage in that fight was it David Haye. It was a weak imitation of David Haye,” Haye said to skysports.com. “You can spend too much time worrying about press conferences, internet beef and stuff that has no bearing on the fight.”
What seemed to upset Haye the most before he fought Bellew last year was how the Liverpool fighter refused to act afraid of him. Bellew chose to talk boldly and predict victory. I don’t think Haye had fought too many guys that did that with him, and he felt that Bellew was out of his league in the fight because he hadn’t accomplished as much with his career. It bothered Haye that a fighter with clearly less size, power, skills and pedigree was saying that he was going to beat him. Haye didn’t like that, but it was expected.
Bellew wasn’t going to roll over before the fight and admit that he was out of his league against Haye. He was going to talk trash and dare Haye to prove that he’s better than him. It probably bothered Haye nearly as much if he choose someone super talented from his own weight class at heavyweight rather than agreeing to fight a cruiserweight, who wasn’t considered to be even in the top 3 in that division.
Bellew might not have been even a top 5 cruiserweight at the time Haye picked him out for a fight at heavyweight. Taking on a guy that is so far beneath him in talent set Haye up in a position where he never going to look good unless he knocked Bellew out in the 1st round. When Haye had a bad 1st round, it threw him off and led to him struggling before ultimately suffering the Achilles injury. Even when Haye was winning rounds 2 through 4, he was missing with his right hand, and Bellew making him look bad with his ability to avoid his power shots. Bellew wasn’t doing anything on offense, but he was still making Haye look bad by avoiding his power shots in a clever manner.
“This time I have let him do the screaming and shouting. I have let him make the quotes. I will just do my training, then knock him out,” Haye said about Bellew. “The performances when I have boxed well came when I was cool, calm and focused on the job in hand.”
Despite doing very little trash talking, Haye has almost completely overshadowed Bellew in the last few weeks. Everyone is focusing on Haye, and ignoring Bellew, who already looks like the loser no matter what he says. Bellew doesn’t seem as confident as he was before, and you can tell that he doesn’t believe his own hype.
Bellew understands what he’s up against in this fight. He was knocked out in the past by Adonis Stevenson in 2013 in an embarrassing 6th round stoppage, and the fights since then have been against mostly guys that he had the advantage over. Haye is the only guy that Bellew wasn’t viewed as the favorite to beat. That’s not because Bellew has fought a lot of good fighters since his loss to Stevenson, because he hasn’t. Bellew’s fights since that loss have come against these fighters:
• Nathan Cleverly
• David Haye
• BJ Flores
• Mateusz Masternak
• Illunga Makabu
• Ivica Bacurin
• Arturs Kulikauskis
• Julio Cesar Dos Santos
• Valery Brudov
Haye stood out well above that pack of fighters as the most talented of the bunch, and it was assumed that he was going to beat Bellew even easier than Stevenson. After all, Haye, 6’3” 220 lbs., is a lot bigger than the 5’11” Stevenson, who fights at 175. Stevenson made easy work of Bellew in knocking him down and stopping him in the 6th round.