Fight Club: Haye can silence his critics with a knockout showing

Andy Lewis 09:55 11/01/2016
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  • Back in the ring: David Haye.

    The true size of the task facing David Haye in his attempts to revive his career was revealed this week when the TV rights for his comeback were snapped up by an obscure British cable channel.

    The 35-year-old former WBA world heavyweight champion will end a near four-year hiatus when he takes on Australian Mark de Mori in London this Saturday.

    Haye hasn’t boxed since an impressive five-round demolition of Dereck Chisora in July 2012, while a year earlier he had challenged to unify the division against then undisputed champion Wladimir Klitschko.

    His win over Chisora was a major event in the UK and screened live by Sky Sports, while his chastening pay-per-view defeat to Klitschko was deemed the biggest heavyweight bout in years and reached a global television audience of more than 500 million viewers in 150 countries.

    This weekend, his comeback will be shown on the free-to-air Dave, the self-proclaimed ‘home of witty banter’, and a channel where you’d usually find round the clock repeats of old comedy shows. Haye will hope that doesn’t prove a cruel metaphor for this final chapter in his career.

    The Londoner was once arguably Britain’s most popular boxer, but the capricious nature of the sports fan should never be underestimated and Haye has little credit left in his account. He failed miserably in backing up the big talk when he eventually snared a showdown with Klitschko (subsequently blaming an injured toe), twice withdrew from bouts with Tyson Fury late in the day, while his endless reality television appearances eroded his credibility further.

    Indeed, it seems an age since his terrific ability inside the ring defined him.

    Haye was a sensation at cruiserweight, cleaning up the division and knocking out champion Jean-Marc Mormeck in his Paris stronghold in an underrated away victory for a British fighter.

    He stepped up to heavyweight, and in spite of the harsh truth being that he is probably a little too small for the division, he beat the biggest man in world boxing with a memorable hit and run mission against Russian ogre Nikolai Valuev.

    Haye is a two-weight world title holder and one of the most exciting fighters Britain has ever produced. He has 26 wins in his 28 fights and 24 knockouts. You daren’t take your eyes off the action because the end could arrive at any moment – the very essence of heavyweight boxing. It shouldn’t be the case that Haye has anything to prove, but it really feels like he does.

    He’s right to say he has “unfinished business”. So here he finds himself, exchanging leather with an Aussie journeyman on a network familiar with few bar insomniacs. Now it’s up to Haye to change perceptions, and he’ll know he is perhaps only a couple of devastating performances away from being back on the road to mainstream appreciation.

    People love entertaining, big-punching heavyweights and Haye is just that. De Mori, however, is nowhere near the level a prime Hayemaker operated at, so a brutal, crushing KO victory this weekend is the minimum requirement if he is to assuage the tide of scepticism.

    And assuming surgery and a long respite has cured the shoulder problem which put the brakes on his career then there are plenty of reasons to believe he can be the force of old.

    Haye isn’t a fighter who has been in wars. In fact, the vast majority of his fights have ended in his favour, and well within the distance. He has only really taken punishment twice – once as a novice against the wily Carl Thompson, and then in eating a feast of jabs against Klitschko.

    Seemingly reinvigorated and enjoying work with new trainer Shane McGuigan, Haye insists he feels in tremendous shape. Let’s hope so, as heavyweight boxing is much better for his presence.

    With Fury having dethroned Klitschko and the emergence of fighters like Deontay Wilder, Luis Ortiz, Joseph Parker and, of course, fellow Brit Anthony Joshua, a fit and firing Haye would further enhance a resurgent division.

    Too often derided these days, Haye needs a serious statement of intent this Saturday and all that ‘witty banter’ will soon go away.

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