David Haye has vowed to end Tony Bellew’s career when the pair meet at The O2 on Saturday night.
There is no shortage of animosity between the Londoner and the Liverpudlian, a fact emphasised when the latter jumped out of the ring after defeating BJ Flores and tried to land a punch on this weekend’s opponent. Haye admits that he’s been itching to get into the ring with the WBC cruiserweight champion ever since but the former world heavyweight champion is already looking beyond Saturday and higher up the ladder.
Haye lost a bruising encounter with Wladimir Klitschko in 2011 and suffered a number of career-threatening injuries. But the lure of the canvas has proved too strong for retirement. At 36, he is giving a couple of years to ‘Bomber’ but has much more top-level experience than the younger man. Both have only lost twice but Bellew has had to build up his body mass to take this grudge match and that rarely ends well.
Haye has fought only three rounds since making his comeback, stopping both Mark De Mori and Arnold Gjergjaj quickly, so there is a question mark about stamina if Bellew manages to stick around. The latter has won eight times since losing to Adonis Stevenson in Quebec at the end of 2013, though his victory over Nathan Cleverly a year later was nothing if not controversial.
But bookmakers think that Haye will have too much for his opponent and is only a best 1/5 to win with Paddy Power. But it hasn’t gone down well in Bellew’s camp that the Londoner has been flaunting his wealth and mocking their man. Bellew (a best 5/1 to win) has recorded 18 knockouts in his 31 bouts so you would normally say that he has a puncher’s chance. But Haye is not an easy man to knock down. I doubt he’s as good as he was before his injuries but is probably still a classy fighter and he seems determined to teach Bellew a lesson. Don’t be taken in by the posing, he’ll have trained hard for this.
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