What's your David Haye career obituary?

[Flashing Blade]

My opinion of David Haye is all about his actions outside the ring.
When Hayemaker promotions was set up- they promised to revolutionise boxing. I went to their first show in Sheffield and it was competitive fights down the card and there was an ethos of giving the fans value for money and treating the fighters fairly. It really was how I wanted the boxing business to be.
After Hayemaker- I see his career as being about all the things I dislike about boxing: collaborating with the Maltese to get round regulation, horrible mismatches and fake feud.s. Throw in the toe excuse, the regular pull outs and everything about the Audley fight and I'd say he went from being my favourite boxer to my least favourite boxer.
Now he has nowhere to go in boxing- i expect he will try to stay in the limelight with a spectacularly unsuccessful move into MMA.

[Exoddus]

10 fights at Heavyweight with a record of 7 wins 3 losses.

Only became a world champion by beating Nikolay Valuev who lost the pervious fight to a 85 year old Evander Holyfield. The only reason they didn't screw Haye on the score cards like they did with Evander, was because the Haye fight was going to be his last anyway. Having been beating by an over the hill Holyfield.

His best win was probably Chisora in 2012.

Cost people fortunes with travel and hotel costs by pulling out of many fights. Which the fans never really forgave him for.

Great Cruiserweight. Average Heavyweight.

[bigjack]

Brilliant cruiserweight tainted by the money grabbing stint at heavyweight,pulled out of so many fights and cost many fans a lot of money and became extremely arrogant to the point where i was pleased he got the beatings he deserved.The severed heads and the gang rape stuff sickened me and i'm glad to see the back of him at any sort of competitive level,even more pleased that it was Bellew that ended it for him.

[Horse]

Only became a world champion by beating Nikolay Valuev who lost the pervious fight to a 85 year old Evander Holyfield. The only reason they didn't screw Haye on the score cards like they did with Evander, was because the Haye fight was going to be his last anyway. Having been beating by an over the hill Holyfield.

Screw Haye?

A win for Valuev would have been fair. It was a close fight that plenty of people scored for Valuev.

[oogiebe]

Well, conclusions are pretty obvious. A great cruiserweight career, as mentioned, and a solid heavyweight career being a minor champion for a while.

Yeah...Agreed. Seems to be consensus.

[bennie]

David Haye bows out of boxing with a career to console him in his old age but right now he languishes in a state of disbelief at the back-to-back losses to Tony Bellew that force him out of the game he loves; right now he stops himself thinking ahead and thinks like Jess Willard: “I have $100,000 and a farm in Kansas - I have a farm!”
Londoner Haye did everything and more in his fighting days which he found all too easy when he turned pro in 2002 after a glittering amateur career. He romped to 10-0 (10) and then stepped up in a 12-rounder at Wembley against Carl “The Cat” Thompson and expected another quick win over a 40-year-old who was there to be hit. “I've never met anyone who didn't respect my power,” he cracked. Thompson soaked up everything and waited for him to weaken, and he weakened in the fifth. He bounced back with another string of knockouts but showed a grittier side to his game when he went into the eighth round to overwhelm Lasse Johansen of Denmark and into the ninth to stop Italy's Giacobbe Fragomeni, both in the sweltering confines of York Hall. He also went the full 12 with slippery Belgian Ismael Abdoul in a venue in Altrincham that was even hotter than York Hall, although Haye barely broke sweat in winning every round on the cards of all three judges. His game was more patient, more 'rounded'.
Cruiserweight David stepped up to heavyweight for a crushing one-round dismissal of Poland's Tomasz Bonin, a sign of things to come, then dropped back down and gave one of the greatest displays of his career to stop Jean-Marc Mormeck in Paris in 2007 to lift WBC and WBA belts, taking a shrewd knee when the stocky Frenchman hurt him in the fourth round and allowing his head to clear, before roaring back to finish Mormeck in the seventh with a series of brilliant shots. Nobody can take that display away from him. Nobody can say that he didn't learn from Thompson.
Haye thumped Swansea's Enzo Maccarinelli in two rounds in a unification showdown in London but was struggling to stay down to cruiserweight and made the inevitable move to the giants in December 2008 with a five-round mauling of Monte Barrett, who had jumped over the ropes when he made his ring entrance, tripped and fell partly on his face, the start of a bad night for the New Yorker who went five more times in the fight. Haye showed he could also whack at the higher weight so he jumped straight into a world title shot at Nikolai Valuev for the WBA belt and boxed smartly to outscore the Russian mammoth in Germany in 2009, rocking Valuev in the final round with a big left hook. The skinny light-heavyweight amateur who boxed for Fitzroy Lodge was world heavyweight champion.
Sadly, David's reign was fairly undistinguished. He stopped Puerto Rican “Quiet Man” John Ruiz in 11 rounds in a ponderous affair in Manchester and needed nothing to finish Audley Harrison in three, again in Manchester, but a defining fight with Wladimir Klitschko in Germany in 2011 defined him as a disappointment and earned him ridicule when he blamed a tame points defeat on a broken little toe. Haye never went for it like he did against Mormeck, like Anthony Joshua did against Klitschko and perhaps inevitably, he walked away afterwards but that little toe brought him back a year later when the immature Dereck Chisora got in his face about it (I won't bother explaining). Their subsequent showdown at Upton Park hurt the British game as promoter F rank Warren proved that you don't need the Board to stage a pro fight in the UK and set a dangerous precedent that others have followed ever since. Haye won in five rounds, walked away a second time but was back again in 2016, getting older and older and more and more injury prone and the two losses to Bellew must surely spell the end for a 37-year-old who needs to adapt to life without boxing.
A world champion at two weights, he ranks as our greatest ever cruiserweight and one of our greatest natural punchers. The man from Bermondsey could really whack.

[oogiebe]

No offense, but I read not one word of that narrative. Too much for a thread.

[jamamb]

its not so much the volumn but the spacing, spaced out paragraphs are needed man!!

but bennies write ups are quality, especially for more obscure fighters of past generations that he helps me get to know

[oogiebe]

So long and goodbye.

[dookus]

David Haye bows out of boxing with a career to console him in his old age but right now he languishes in a state of disbelief at the back-to-back losses to Tony Bellew that force him out of the game he loves; right now he stops himself thinking ahead and thinks like Jess Willard: “I have $100,000 and a farm in Kansas - I have a farm!”
Londoner Haye did everything and more in his fighting days which he found all too easy when he turned pro in 2002 after a glittering amateur career. He romped to 10-0 (10) and then stepped up in a 12-rounder at Wembley against Carl “The Cat” Thompson and expected another quick win over a 40-year-old who was there to be hit. “I've never met anyone who didn't respect my power,” he cracked. Thompson soaked up everything and waited for him to weaken, and he weakened in the fifth. He bounced back with another string of knockouts but showed a grittier side to his game when he went into the eighth round to overwhelm Lasse Johansen of Denmark and into the ninth to stop Italy's Giacobbe Fragomeni, both in the sweltering confines of York Hall. He also went the full 12 with slippery Belgian Ismael Abdoul in a venue in Altrincham that was even hotter than York Hall, although Haye barely broke sweat in winning every round on the cards of all three judges. His game was more patient, more 'rounded'.
Cruiserweight David stepped up to heavyweight for a crushing one-round dismissal of Poland's Tomasz Bonin, a sign of things to come, then dropped back down and gave one of the greatest displays of his career to stop Jean-Marc Mormeck in Paris in 2007 to lift WBC and WBA belts, taking a shrewd knee when the stocky Frenchman hurt him in the fourth round and allowing his head to clear, before roaring back to finish Mormeck in the seventh with a series of brilliant shots. Nobody can take that display away from him. Nobody can say that he didn't learn from Thompson.
Haye thumped Swansea's Enzo Maccarinelli in two rounds in a unification showdown in London but was struggling to stay down to cruiserweight and made the inevitable move to the giants in December 2008 with a five-round mauling of Monte Barrett, who had jumped over the ropes when he made his ring entrance, tripped and fell partly on his face, the start of a bad night for the New Yorker who went five more times in the fight. Haye showed he could also whack at the higher weight so he jumped straight into a world title shot at Nikolai Valuev for the WBA belt and boxed smartly to outscore the Russian mammoth in Germany in 2009, rocking Valuev in the final round with a big left hook. The skinny light-heavyweight amateur who boxed for Fitzroy Lodge was world heavyweight champion.
Sadly, David's reign was fairly undistinguished. He stopped Puerto Rican “Quiet Man” John Ruiz in 11 rounds in a ponderous affair in Manchester and needed nothing to finish Audley Harrison in three, again in Manchester, but a defining fight with Wladimir Klitschko in Germany in 2011 defined him as a disappointment and earned him ridicule when he blamed a tame points defeat on a broken little toe. Haye never went for it like he did against Mormeck, like Anthony Joshua did against Klitschko and perhaps inevitably, he walked away afterwards but that little toe brought him back a year later when the immature Dereck Chisora got in his face about it (I won't bother explaining). Their subsequent showdown at Upton Park hurt the British game as promoter F rank Warren proved that you don't need the Board to stage a pro fight in the UK and set a dangerous precedent that others have followed ever since. Haye won in five rounds, walked away a second time but was back again in 2016, getting older and older and more and more injury prone and the two losses to Bellew must surely spell the end for a 37-year-old who needs to adapt to life without boxing.
A world champion at two weights, he ranks as our greatest ever cruiserweight and one of our greatest natural punchers. The man from Bermondsey could really whack.

[Tuan_Jim]

Bennie is a very good writer and here I think hits the kernel of the subject. Haye just did not go for it versus Klitschko, the way others, win or lose, went for it on their big night. It really left a bitter taste in the mouth, given his power and Klit's chin, and the pre-fight talk and the lamentable post-fight excuse. Unfortunately that bandaged little toe, and the circus-like contests since, seem to loom larger in the memory than that gung-ho blast-out of Mormeck in his backyard.

[Bodyshot3]

Awesome, very successful and exciting crusierweight in a division that has often frequently disappointed.

The Mormeck fight in France was the highlight but also the absolute take down of Maccarinelli and also beating Fragomeni who would go onto win and defend world titles were also hugely impressive.

The heavyweight Haye was a totally mixed bag.......I still think that the Valuev win is far better than it is credited for.

Winning in Germany was hard in this era - there are any number of absurd/outrageous hometown points results that still properly stink - and Valuev was not a complete klutz.

Sadly the back-end of David's career is a story of injury, a lack of dedication, excuses and some blatant cynicism.

Things unravelled after the fight with Wlad I would suggest with the Chisora fight being his last quality performance.

[jamesmcdonnell]

i'll remember him as a very exciting cruiserweight and a total bell end who took the piss out of the fans in his late career.

his patheticly passive effort against wlad still sticks in the craw.

[gilgamesh]

i'll remember him as a very exciting cruiserweight and a total bell end who took the piss out of the fans in his late career.

his patheticly passive effort against wlad still sticks in the craw.

Yeah I think that's where a great deal of my distaste for Haye lies. Not only in the fact that he talked so much about how he's gonna do this, and do that, and backed out time and time again, but then when he actually got the fight he fought like a man that's scared of his own shadow.

All the talk was just that...talk.

That's why they say talk is cheap.

[Sklar]

The first five things that pop into my head, in order, when I think of Haye: Toe, Bellew, brawl in Germany with Del, Adam Booth and Cyprus (inter-linked, weird I know), I’m a Celebrity.

That’s how I’ll remember him.

[Noxy]

Haye was a brilliant fighter at cruiser, he did very well as a heavyweight too. Sure he fell short against Wlad but who didn’t, let’s be real. It was the injuries in the end that did for him. Remember the Fury fights falling through? I‘m sure he’s been knacked for a while now and I‘d like to see him call it a day. He can focus his energy on Hayemaker promotions instead. Good luck to him, I enjoyed following his career from the start. He was a flash guy who could back it back up, in his day that is.

[liamlion]

I'm glad to say that I saw Haye in his peak at the o2 that night when he demolished Enzo Mac in devastating fashion. Haye was a British fighter who was so athletic, fast and with real dynamite power.

Not many British fighters have received The Ring belt in their career but Haye is a member of that exclusive club. He dethroned a world class Mormeck in an amazingly tough and rugged fight away from home.

There is a sense of under-achievement however, with Haye's career. The success seemingly went to his head and he got a taste for the high-life. He will surely regret wasting his early 30s sat in temporary retirement.

He was also a man, who in reality was caught between two weight divisions.

The Tyson Fury fight would have been very interesting and a real shame it never quite happened.

[Grilling Machine]

Giving his career some more thought, I think you have to say that Chisora was his greatest win. Del wasn't as good a heavyweight as Mormeck was a cruiser, but he was stronger overall, and I think Haye was a bit scared of him.

Because when you look at Haye's heavyweight campaign it's full of qualifiers. He knew he had the beating of Barrett if nothing went wrong, ditto Ruiz and Harrison. An earlier Harrison seemed like a huge threat, but the cracks had appeared by the time of their fight. The ageing Holyfield showed that a major size disadvantage could be mitigated against the slow Valuev, and there's no shortage of footage of Wlad reeling from big shots. It's no leap to imagine Haye watching the first Peter fight and seeing himself outdoing the Nightmare.

But Chisora was meant to be Vitali — another ageing champ who'd recently started to look beatable — and was in his prime. Not as fast or hard-hitting as Haye, but a natural heavyweight with an engine and a chin. If not for that confrontation and the money it generated, Haye would've avoided Chisora. That he didn't is testament to his courage, entering into the only fight besides Wlad that he wasn't the favourite in.

It wasn't his best performance — that's still Mormeck for me — but it was his best win. If he'd never been a boxer and stayed slim, I think he'd weigh as little as 190lb. His heavyweight career was always a physical mistake I've felt, but financially a very good choice.

[candyslim]

its not so much the volumn but the spacing, spaced out paragraphs are needed man!!

but bennies write ups are quality, especially for more obscure fighters of past generations that he helps me get to know

Agree with that completely. A fine summary Bennie if not very easy on the eye.

Sorry for unnecessary bumping - just catching up.

[Tuan_Jim]

i'll remember him as a very exciting cruiserweight and a total bell end who took the piss out of the fans in his late career.

his patheticly passive effort against wlad still sticks in the craw.

I think James sums up the consensus in a concise and suitably blunt manner.

[mickey1975]

Giving his career some more thought, I think you have to say that Chisora was his greatest win. Del wasn't as good a heavyweight as Mormeck was a cruiser, but he was stronger overall, and I think Haye was a bit scared of him.

Because when you look at Haye's heavyweight campaign it's full of qualifiers. He knew he had the beating of Barrett if nothing went wrong, ditto Ruiz and Harrison. An earlier Harrison seemed like a huge threat, but the cracks had appeared by the time of their fight. The ageing Holyfield showed that a major size disadvantage could be mitigated against the slow Valuev, and there's no shortage of footage of Wlad reeling from big shots. It's no leap to imagine Haye watching the first Peter fight and seeing himself outdoing the Nightmare.

But Chisora was meant to be Vitali — another ageing champ who'd recently started to look beatable — and was in his prime. Not as fast or hard-hitting as Haye, but a natural heavyweight with an engine and a chin. If not for that confrontation and the money it generated, Haye would've avoided Chisora. That he didn't is testament to his courage, entering into the only fight besides Wlad that he wasn't the favourite in.

It wasn't his best performance — that's still Mormeck for me — but it was his best win. If he'd never been a boxer and stayed slim, I think he'd weigh as little as 190lb. His heavyweight career was always a physical mistake I've felt, but financially a very good choice.

I’m guessing he was a huge favourite against Del!

[jamesmcdonnell]

totally agree about haye at heavyweight, he made 190 pounds for a good while without a struggle. probably a large part of why he fell apart physically is because he packed 30 pounds of muscle onto a skeleton, ligaments and tendons that werent up to the job. he never had a big frame to pack it on to.

[jamesmcdonnell]

totally agree about haye at heavyweight, he made 190 pounds for a good while without a struggle. probably a large part of why he fell apart physically is because he packed 30 pounds of muscle onto a skeleton, ligaments and tendons that werent up to the job. he never had a big frame to pack it on to.

[J]

David Haye fights I attended:
cruiserweight
vs Carl Thompson Wembley conf / arena
Vs Fragomenni York hall
vs Enzo O2.

heavyweight.
none.

nuff said.

[stujones]

Not saying James Mc isn't wrong - but I still think the positive state of Heavyweight boxing today is largely due to Haye.... No TV had any interest in the heavyweights before Haye vs Klitchsko and even though that fight stank - US TV still maintained an interest in Klitchsko after that fight and it was Haye who made the build up to that fight.

I also thought, but I feel I am wrong, that the sands of time might give Haye a little tiny bit more credit for his actual performance vs Klitchsko - Toe gate, yes - rediculous.... again if really a broken toe was the causing so many problems in his planting his feet - then don't fight. People were quite right to give Haye a go for blaming his toe, but looking back Adam Booth was also very guilty of citing the toe. Toe gate was probably the reason why he did not want to blame an obvious injury in Bellew 1 and a probable injury in Bellew 2.

But putting the Toe to one side.... I think a few things I thought might have altered over time about that fight (that seemingly haven't) - 1 - Klitchsko does not receive the credit for that display.... How different were Haye's tactics in the Valuev fight compared to the Klitchsko fight. I would say not that different, Klitchsko's awkwardness and speed made it difficult for Haye to counter at all. 2) Compared to other decent challengers and champion (Ibragimov) Haye's performance seems to be singled out - but yet I would argue that he posed more questions than the majority of Klitchsko's challengers between 2006 and 2015. 3) Fury's display against Klitchsko has been called a masterclass. Yet the punch stats of Fury and Haye vs Klitchko (a very different Klitchsko) was actually quite comparable.