What's your David Haye career obituary?

[Tuan_Jim]

I don't know how similar the punch stats were but the Fury and Haye challenges were entirely different fights. By rd 8 versus Fury Klit was looking knackered, discouraged and desperate. He never looked anything other than comfortably ahead versus Haye.

[candyslim]

The thing is if asked to design the specification of a boxer who would have all the physical and stylistic attributes necessary to overcome Wladimir Klitschko, the blueprint would look very much like Tyson Fury.

Klitschko will rightly be remembered as by far a better fighter than Tyson Fury, but Tyson would always have to tools to beat him even at his peak (unless of course Wlad could actually land that big right hand which he failed to do with any real authority when they fought)

Haye was made to measure for Klitschko, possessing few of the necessary tools for job..

[Syntax Error]

It's hard to say much more as all bases have been brilliantly covered.

Haye has a career that over 95% of professional boxers that ever existed would be proud of.

No doubts about his CW career, he is one of the best ever at the weight, but his HW career will & should be quickly forgotten.

Quite simply one of the most cynical HW careers ever, managing to bag a trinket whilst arguably never facing one single world class HW.

Valuev was a gigantic lummox & the only other 'decent' HWs he beat were Barrett & Chisora & that's tells you all you need to know.

His comeback in 2016 was a laughable money grab which many of us saw right through, that's why my respect for Bellew went up, because he challenged Haye & told the world exactly the things I had been thinking since Haye returned.

[Tuan_Jim]

I wonder how many other boxers have this stark demarcation in credibility that David Haye's career has?

George Foreman 69-77 and 87-97 are two totally different fighters and business strategists yet still eminently credible. The only one similar to Haye that I can think of (off the top of my head) is Mike Tyson. From 85-91 you have the most awesome figure in sport. But from 95-05 you have a sort of travelling freak show which I assume most boxing fans prefer to forget. So perhaps Tyson is the father of this cynical pug profiteer model that Haye employed? Seems like a thing that could only be achieved in the modern era--an awful synchronicity of uncountable belts, massaging records, subscription TV hoopla and low public/press scrutiny.

[brilo33]

Never beat a class heavy weight for me. Looked good against inferior oppo

[Grilling Machine]

I wonder how many other boxers have this stark demarcation in credibility that David Haye's career has?

Most examples go down as slides, but how about Audley?

[lillywhite14]

He busted up Ruiz, who actually came to fight that night too. That was an impressive win imo. Ruiz always gave his opposition trouble bar the Tua blowout of course.

[Bodyshot3]

He busted up Ruiz, who actually came to fight that night too. That was an impressive win imo. Ruiz always gave his opposition trouble bar the Tua blowout of course.

Ruiz certainly gave it a right whirl to his credit and had also got the business of being awkward, borderline unwatchble, stubborn and yet sometimes very effective down to a bit of a fine art.

But he was well on the B-Side when he faced Haye for my money.

I still think that beating Valuev on the road was a great result - Valuev is something of a figure of fun/derision due to his freakish size and odd appearance - but he was heavily backed and fighting in his adopted country and had the sort of colossal brute strength that a small heavyweight like Haye had to deflect whilst also pushing the attack as the challenger.

[whiskey]

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.

Agreed.

Big mouth and big punch - what wasn't there to like ?

I always tuned into Haye's fights, love him or hate him - that's something to be admired.