IT’S THE FINAL BELL FOR HAYE
But Bellew is eyeing Ward and then Fury
Ward wants this fight. As for Fury, he and Tony have shaken hands
THE little fat Scouser, as Tony Bellew describes himself, is raising his gaze to superstar stadium fights against Andre Ward and Tyson Fury at his beloved Everton’s Goodison park.
The playboy of the boxing world, as David Haye describes himself, is staring down between the abyss of retirement and a black hole reeking of more agonised corrosion of his legacy.
The hardest game turned on its axis on Saturday night.
Liverpool’s Bomber, with his nuclear destruction of the London Hayemaker he had wounded 14 months earlier, has widened such unexpected horizons that he spent his Sunday lunch begging permission from the lady he marries this summer to carry on slugging.
London’s pin-up boy, by contrast — his prospects of fighting Anthony Joshua at Wembley put through the shredder of his broken body — was left rummaging among the debris of his career for scraps worth the risk of further humiliation.
Bellew, the working man’s champion, truly believes he can take down Ward, the self-anointed Son of God who will be ranked among the world’s pound-forpound greatest when he renounces his retirement, and Fury, still the linear heavyweight ruler as he makes his comeback.
Those of us who questioned Bellew’s capacity for thrashing Haye a second time had better be wary of doubting him again. His promoter harbours no such qualms.
Eddie Hearn left the 02 long after midnight talking of 50,000 crowds at Goodison for Ward ‘soon’ and Fury ‘within a year.’
The Matchroom man also revealed: ‘Ward now wants this fight. As for Fury, when Tony was close to giving up on Haye ever being ready for this rematch, he shook hands with Tyson on a deal.
‘I told him to think about the low calibre of fighters Fury wants to face in his first few fights and that he ain’t gonna fight you now. But it can be a huge fight next year.’
Bellew said simply: ‘Tyson’s not as big a puncher as Joshua, Deontay Wilder... or David Haye.’
Ward is pondering a comeback and Bellew has approached him personally. The American appeared alongside Bellew in
Creed, the latest movie in the Rocky franchise.
It is not known whether Bellew mentioned to Ward this opinion of how the fight would go, at an agreed cruiserweight: ‘I would out-box Andre and knock him out.
‘I know you’ll laugh and say I’d have no chance. He’s an all-time great but I’m the only one who can beat him at his own biggest strength, boxing on the inside.
‘He will always be remembered as greater than me but I have a certain set of skills which he has never faced before.’
Those techniques were as fundamental to his conquests of Haye as the injuries which have plagued his more celebrated rival.
Whether or not Haye suffered a minor recurrence of his Achilles tendon rupture in the first fight — he was limping somewhat again — Bellew’s expertise at close quarters was crucial. As was his willingness to withstand the power of those Hayemaker rights early on.
Bellew was staggered twice in the opening two rounds. When he returned those blows with heavy interest in the third, the former world heavyweight champion was left with only his fighting heart to fall back on as he hit the canvas, twice. Somehow Haye stumbled through a savaging in the fourth. Then, in the fifth, came a left hook from Hades. Down he went again and when he lurched upright a third time he was out on his feet. Referee Howard Foster warily let him continue but as the Bomber went for the blitz, he was quick to save Haye from his own courage.
Some on social media protested they had been conned into buying the fight and it may be that Haye deceived us to some extent as to the fullness of his health and fitness. But the 20,000 capacity crowd roared their approval.
Although it was not a worldclass contest and no titles were at stake, this was a thriller in its own right, enacted by two men in the goldfish bowl of their personal enmity.
At 37 years old, in the parlance of his battle hymn, ‘there ain’t no help for Haye now’ as he ponders a bleak future.
At 35, Bellew is coming of age. In the lyrics of four of his fellow Merseysiders: ‘You’ve got to believe he’s getting better, all the time.’