Rematch is ego trip for Haye, Bellew
THE trash-talking between pumpedup cruiserweights David Haye and Tony Bellew is just a playground tiff without actual substance.
In describing Haye’s efforts to gatecrash the heavyweights as a trumped-up cruiserweight, Frank Bruno memorably likened it to choosing between “different cups of tea: Primark and Harrods.”
As British boxing staggers towards the drunken mayhem of Haye’s rematch with Bellew in London tonight, it is tempting to suggest that the occasion labours under much the same delusions of grandeur. For this is, ultimately, nothing but a bargainbasement ego trip dressed up in boxoffice clothing.
There is no world title at stake, or even a national one. It is simply pantomime score-settling, a playground tiff. The witless verbal jousts between the protagonists do not help, of course. Even at the most selfimportant press conferences, public heckling tends to be discouraged, but the puppeteers at Matchroom Boxing prefer to make it part of the show, throwing the thin-skinned Haye to an audience of jeering Liverpudlians and relishing the meltdowns that ensue.
Thus we have been treated to Bellew calling his opponent the “bitch from Bermondsey“, and Haye responding with a threat to “smash your f ***** g head in.”
Not exactly “float like a butterfly” material, is it?
It all bubbled over again Thursday as some head-nuzzling between Haye and Bellew dissolved into an on-stage melee at a press conference.
The real mystery is why anybody cares what eventuates in a clash of these two braggarts, save for the faint hope that they could contrive to knock each other out.
Take Haye, for example, whose role in this low-rent vaudeville is borne purely of an urge to recapture lost relevance.
In the past seven years, Haye has managed just 19 rounds of competitive boxing, 11 of them in defeat by Bellew. He slipped into retirement in 2011, after losing to Wladimir Klitschko – a result he blamed, amid much derision, on a broken toe – and could have done everyone a favour by staying there.
However, by most estimates, Haye is the country’s third biggest boxing draw, behind only Anthony Joshua and Amir Khan.
In his fleeting pomp, Haye was a destructive cruiserweight, rising from a 2007 knock-down against France’s Jean-Marc Mormeck to win, and achieving the rare feat of unifying the division with victory over Enzo Maccarinelli.
Upon graduation as a heavyweight, his speed and guile proved too much for Nikolay Valuev, a 2.1-metre tall Russian who revelled in a moniker as the Beast from the East. But since his humbling by Klitschko, Haye’s career has been a study in crudity and getrich-quick schemes.
Now, in the company of fellow motormouth Bellew, Haye has reclaimed the attention that is his oxygen.
He even argued that people liked his self-projection as a “lunatic.” —