‘My family knows I could be killed in the boxing ring’
On the eve of what could be his final bout, David Haye tells Guy Kelly how meditation and veganism have made him stronger than ever
‘It’s all theatre. People forget it’s an entertainment as well as a sport’
Daintily sipping a green tea in south London, David Haye is entirely at peace. Professionally, the former heavyweight boxing champion pummels people until they can’t take any more – and he will hope for that outcome again when he fights Tony Bellew at the O2 Arena tomorrow night – but that’s just his job; outside the ring, he is a master of Zen. He meditates, follows a strict vegan diet, uses salt lamps and refuses to say a bad word about his opponents. If he was younger, he’d be a walking millennial cliché. Shame he’s 37.
“As I sit here, I’m very, very happy,” he says, having squeezed his 6ft 3in, 16st frame into a restaurant chair. “Things are going nice and smoothly. Come fight night, as long as I walk into the ring as I feel right now, everything will be fi-i-ne.”
We meet at the Park Plaza Hotel, a minute’s walk from Haye’s man-cave gym and headquarters underneath a railway arch in Vauxhall. It’s almost five weeks before “Haye v Bellew 2”, which has a lot riding on it. The fight is a rematch of the pair’s March 2017 bout, which saw Bellew win fair and square (Haye admits it, though snapping his Achilles halfway through cannot have helped) after a very ill-tempered build-up. They were due to meet again in December, but then Haye fell down some stairs, injuring his bicep, and the whole shebang was postponed. Here he is, though, fit and healthy, and ready for what might be the final fight of his career.
During the long training period before a bout, which is usually months, Haye shacks up at the Plaza, living in one of the hotel’s penthouse suites to minimise commute times, maximise his chi and presumably remove the need to do laundry. A small platoon of trainers managed by his company, Hayemaker Boxing, flit around. But the focus is very much on him.
“In the past I’ve let things get on top of me. It’s taken me a while to get a team I can trust enough to not have to look over my shoulder and feel I need to micromanage my life,” he says. “I need that energy to rest and recuperate. I have a boxing match, and the outcomes, win or lose, have very different ramifications.”
A lot is made of Haye’s lifestyle, which is variously reported as being the same as any modern professional athlete, or as making Gwyneth Paltrow look a trainwreck. Peta’s “Sexiest Vegan Celebrity of 2014” is apparently (vicious rumours about slyly eating whole chickens abound) still reliant on the plant-based diet, having made the switch that year for ethical reasons, and confirms this passion by loudly admonishing his PR man for drinking a latte.
Meditation remains a work in progress. “I try to silence my mind, and stop the distractions of life coming in. Some call it meditating, some call it praying, or focusing. I wish they’d taught it in schools. I now try and appreciate whatever I’m doing – if I’m looking at a sunset, for example, or if I’m eating some food I think about the texture, the taste, the chewing, the going down to my stomach.”
Righto. Haye has also given up coffee and sex ahead of the fight (he always does, six weeks before). The temporary victims, of course – other than his opponents – are his family. “I could spend 10 times more time with them but that would affect my performance. My family know the boxing ring is a dangerous place, you can be killed, and you’ve got more chance of winning if you’re healthy and stress-free.” Haye and his ex-wife Natasha (they divorced in 2016 after an eight-year marriage) have a nine-year-old son, Cassius. He is a keen tennis player, and has never wanted to box. Would Dad have worried about the dangers of fighting? “Of course. It makes it a lot more enjoyable for me as a parent. My mother had to watch me compete, knowing I could get knocked out. I didn’t appreciate that when I was a kid.”
Haye grew up near Bermondsey, south London, living in an 18-storey council block until he was eight, when the family moved a mile down the road. His mother, Jane, is white and worked as a librarian; his father, Deron, was a member of the Windrush generation, arriving from Jamaica at the age of 12.
“Growing up there I just assumed everyone else’s family was mixed-race like ours. It was a massive melting pot. I’m fortunate to have grown up in one of the most multicultural places on Earth.”
The fact a mixed-race woman, Meghan Markle, is joining the Royal family this month “brings a smile” to his face. “I think it’s nice,” he says, quite definitely thinking about it for the first time. “It’s a small step, but who would have thought that [would happen]?”
As a child he liked nothing more than to organise fights between himself and a kid from a rival school; he tended to win, unsurprisingly, but what he really liked was the drama. “I’d get butterflies in my stomach. I’d get as many people to come and watch as possible, and never wanted to fight anybody unless there was a crowd. Otherwise what was the point? More than I wanted to win, I wanted people to see me win. I wanted people to tell the tale afterwards.” A pause, before some cod-philosophy. “If I had a fight and no one was around to see it, did it really happen?”
That head-scratcher is unlikely to prove a problem tomorrow. The O2 Arena will contain 20,000 fans and, he hopes, many more on Sky Box Office. This time it’s an easy sell, since there’s the “revenge” angle, but things turned ugly at yesterday’s pre-fight exchange in which Bellew shoved Haye in the throat. Last time, Haye threatened to “hospitalise” Bellew, called his fans “retards”, hit him at a press conference, and at one point just shouted, “your mum”. “It’s all theatre,” he says. “People forget it’s an entertainment as well as a sport.”
The reason he’s done “every single TV show”, including I’m A Celebrity…, is to reach a greater audience. Someone like Anthony Joshua – who now holds three of the four major heavyweight titles, including the WBA belt Haye won from 7ft Russian Nikolai Valuev in his finest hour in 2009 – hasn’t needed to do Bushtucker Trials to create a brand.
“[Joshua] really is a nice guy,” he says of his friend, “but if he was a little bit crazy and said controversial things, he’d lose endorsements but he’d make twice the money on pay-per-view…” It sounds exhausting, being a boxer. I think I’d turn to Himalayan salt lamps, too.
Will he still feel those childhood butterflies tomorrow? “No, I don’t get that any more,” he sighs. “But when then the bell rings, my senses get heightened, the suspense, all the people… that’s when the drama hits.”
Oliver Brown: Sport, Page 10
Tony Bellow v David Haye from the O2 London is exclusively live on Sky Sports Box Office tomorrow night