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Haye enjoys some birthday cake Lewis Whyld/PA Wire/Press Association Images
Talking the Talk

Haye leaves a mixed legacy behind him

On the week in which David Haye quit boxing, Gavin Grace tells us why he thinks the Brit is finished forever.

While many are sceptical that David Haye’s boxing days are behind him, I for one believe the Brit when he says his gloves are now hung up forever.

For those who missed it, Haye is sticking to a promise he made to himself never to fight after he was 30, and confirmed that would be the case on Thursday, his 31st birthday.

Many don’t believe Haye, however. Vitali Klitschko’s manager Bernd Broente even claims he is in the middle of negotiations for a fight between the pair – but he certainly sounds like a man who is done.

“I’m done. I’m over the hill. I’m finished. It was always in my mind to retire on this day,” he said this week. “You always want revenge and to go out with your best performance but in life you don’t always get what you want.”

By walking away in this fashion, Haye is attempting to do what many boxers cannot – walk away. Of all sports, boxing is littered with comebacks more than any other. Fighters fight – it is in their nature – and the buzz of a big night is irreplaceable. Most comebacks, however, fail. For every Sugar Ray Leonard win over Marvin Hagler, there’s many more failures, such as Leonard against Terry Norris or Hector Camancho.

Fewer again are the men who walk away, with their faculties intact, and decide enough is enough. They share one trait – they realise when the spark is gone and when the drive is no more. Getting pumped up in front of 20,000 people on a big fight night is easy, but having the drive to give your all in a ten-mile run before 6:00 a.m. on a wet Tuesday morning is not. Barry McGuigan has spoken of losing his passion, Bernard Dunne too and, reading his comments this week, I feel David Haye has realised the same thing.

If there is no more David Haye, then his legacy will be a mixed one. He will be remembered most of all for talking a big fight and producing none at all against Wladimir Klitschko – the feeble image of his broken toe in the ring afterwards will haunt him forever. His achievements at cruiserweight will be largely forgotten by many, but wrongly so. He beat Enzo Maccarinelli in one of the biggest British fights since Benn and Eubank and his knockout of Jean-Marc Mormeck in Paris was simply brilliant.

David Haye will be remembered for his mouth as much as his fists, something he acknowledges himself. The man who predicted his win against Audley Harrison would be as “one-sided as gang rape” regrets nothing.

“If I could do it all over again, I would say the same things louder and harder. I’d really stick the boot in and kick a few more people up the backside.”

I don’t know if we, or his toe, could take that.

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Tonight is another big night for British fighters, with two of the next generation looking to step-up to the void now created by Haye’s absence from the sport. James DeGale fights for a European title in Liverpool. He is looking to bounce back from his loss to George Groves in May but will need to be at his best against Pole Piotr Wilczewski – and he should be.

The fight in Liverpool is chief support to the contest of local boy Tony Bellew and Wales’ Nathan Cleverly. Bellew has talked a big fight for months ahead of this one, but most pundits regard him as a big outsider in this World Light-Heavyweight title fight. The pair have clashed at least twice in
press conferences, so the atmosphere on Merseyside should be special.

And if all that wasn’t enough, there is also a very tasty card in Los Angeles which is being headlined by another light-heavyweight clash. Chad Dawson, who has lost just once, takes on Bernard Hopkins – beaten 5 times but never by father time. The evergreen 46-year-old is the sport’s oldest ever World Champion, but many speculate that could end after this bout, simply because it has to at some point.

This Week In Boxing History

An example of bad refereeing, and of one boxing’s best proving just that, Mike Tyson v. Tyrell Biggs on October 16th, 1987 was a fight between the sports two young heavyweights. One was a ferocious knockout machine, the other the Olympic Champion; both disliked each other. Tyson would later admit that Biggs’ pre-fight trash-talking encouraged him to let the fight continue, though the actions of referee Tony Orlando towards the end of the seventh round helped him in that regard as well.

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