David Haye: Nothing More than a Bully
By Eugene Green
(Managing Editor’s Note: Eugene Green is our newest Feature Writer, covering boxing. I, along with the rest of the team, welcome him aboard!)
A really small, scrawny guy walks into a rowdy bar, and yells: “Who, I said, WHO, wants to fight me??? Come on!!!”
A Hulk looking man-beast separates himself from the wall, slowly walks up to him, grabs him by the throat and calmly says: “I DO.”
The small guy (extricating himself from the icy grip): “What’s your name, man??”
Big guy: “BILL.”
Small guy: “Now who wants to fight me and Bill??”
How do you feel about bullies? I am talking about those loud, obnoxious blowhards that stroll through life turning over desks, chest shoving nerds and lifting little girls’ skirts. Surely, you had a few in your class. Be honest with me – weren’t you wishing you had the cojones to grab a 4×4, and make a hole the size of a crater in the kid’s head? I sure did, but I never saw it happen. Why not? Because the sad truth of life, my friends, is that bullies never, ever-ever, get what is coming to ‘em. If you don’t believe me, take one look at David Haye: he is a poster child of that axiom.
When David was a cruiser, he was one bad cat. Remember those times, when he climbed into the ring with the likes of Greg Scott Briggs, 15-26, and Vance Winn, 6-13-2, and knocked them dead in one round? As a matter of fact, that is what he did for the first two thirds of his career: fight bums, who lost four out of every ten fights they fought. Hell, he did not face an undefeated fighter until four years and 17 fights into his career.
We should really remain objective and not hold the Carl Thompson loss against him. Sure, the guy was forty years old, and had not fought an undefeated opponent since 1993. That sort of thing happens, though: people get winded, people get careless, people get caught. It happened to Wlad Klitschko plenty. For David, that loss served as his wake up call and challenged him to strive for the next level, so desperately needed in his quickly becoming stale career. Six fights down the road he was in a fight with Lasse Johansen, his first undefeated opponent, and knocked him out. Some big names are checked off as victims on his list: Giaccobe Fraggomeni (also undefeated at the time), Enzo Macarinelli (who was actually worth something back then), Mormeck. In the matter of two years, he fought the who’s who of the weight class and cleaned the division spotless. There was no one better than David Haye at the Cruiserweight level at the time. Had he stayed there, and retired there – there is little doubt he would have ended up as one of Great Britain’s boxing heroes and earned himself a meaningful place in the annals of boxing history. Instead, he decided to step up to the bigger challenge of the heavyweight class. That is when the whole world, himself included, found out who David Haye really is.
Master of self-promotion, he did the smartest thing a fighter could do: got in the face of the biggest, baddest S.O.B. on the planet and got under his skin, to a point where he (and the S.O.B’s brother, for that matter) was dying to fight him. In the meantime, he figured it might not be a bad idea to test his skills against a stepping stone, just to see if the shoe fits. So he booked a fight with Monte Barrett, a very respectable and talented veteran, with plenty of zing in both hands. Quite an admirable choice for a first fight, reflective of his very ambitious intentions to conquer the heavyweight world.
So, the story goes like this: Haye comes in at 215 pounds. (which, by modern standards, is way below your average heavy) against a 220 pounds Barrett who, punchers chance aside, is not exactly a top echelon fighter and knocks him around for the whole fight, drops him three times, feeling totally confident, every next round confirming his intention to be the best. And then…something completely unexpected happens. And that “something” rearranges all the screws in the head of David Haye: Monte, who’s been down three times already, gets up and sends Haye to the canvas. The thing about it is that it is not a flash knockdown, he gets him flush and down he goes. Shocked David Haye gets up and finishes the job, all the credit to him, but the thought sticks.
“What thought is that?”, might you ask. Well, if Barrett, who is no spring chicken, and not exactly the top contender, manages to, after three knockdowns, put him on his aspiring arse, then what would happen with a guy like Wlad?! Klitschko is younger, faster, strong, longer reach, has tons of experience and can go for twelve rounds without breaking a sweat. There is just a tiny (infinitesimal, really!) chance, that a bigger, heavier guy might shatter him to pieces. And what then? Does he fight the other brother, and gets broken in half again? And then, with his tail behind his legs, goes back down to cruiserweight and pretends that nothing happened? No, the future generations will not understand that.
It is most likely, that he did not make any decisions after the Barrett fight. His proud heart wanted to go for the gusto, but his brain was telling him to wait. So, he continued to muddy up the waters, by backing out of the fight with Wlad, and resigning with Vitali, a fight, which he had no intention in participating in. Someone in the boxing Olympus must have taken pity at Haye’s conundrum and decided to give him an easy ticket to stardom, by way of Nikolay Valuev, the Russian Sasquatch. By the way, did you know that Nick used to be a volleyball player before he took up boxing? He also writes poetry. What a moving image…Anyway, hopefully, he does those things better than boxing, because he plodded his way to unanimous loss and almost got himself knocked out by the man half his size. And what of Davie? Davie is now the “bona fide” champion of the world!
Much better scenario for him. Now, he can pout and say that the conditions offered by Klitschko brothers are “enslaving” (Hmmm, ever wonder why in a combined 96 fights between the brothers, Mr. Haye is the only one who ever had a contractual problem?) After, all a “real” champion deserves to get paid “real” money. These are all excuses, however. The paper champ is looking to milk his belt for what it’s worth, and then leave like a true English gentleman, without bidding any farewells. You hear the hint of it in his talk of retirement. Tell me: who, in their right mind (except for Floyd Mayweather, of course) at the age of 30, considers to quit a lucrative career? Why would you want to leave as a champion, when you are young, healthy, and making hundreds of thousands, if not millions per fight?
When he moved up to heavyweight, he promised the world that he would “clean up” the division. He was barking at Wladimir, like he was ready to fight him for a big mac in the alley! None if it happened. A bully will always avoid a possibility of getting his ass kicked. The survival instinct is so apparent. He will make as many defenses as possible against your Audley Harrisons and Monte Barretts, but will curtsey right out of the mix when the real danger will present itself.
That is why it is really irrelevant to speculate whether Povetkin or Chagaev is a better fight for him. He turned down the best, when he had a clear opportunity (more than once) to grab the bull by the horns and show the world what he was made of. Actually, he has that in common with Povetkin. Maybe, they ought to fight after all. I could see a really nice header working for them, like “The Least Coward Will Emerge”, or “We Want to Be Champions, Just Not Now”. That’s okay. After all, it’s not about winning in boxing. It’s about participating, right, mom?