Will David Haye Knock down the big Nikolai Valuev?

2 ANSWERS

1. amomipais82
   

   Hi,
   On the face of it, what David Haye is attempting is inestimably mad. And when you tell him so, he rather likes it. He chuckles and gives that big-eyes look that tells you that yes, he is a little bit unhinged. He likes playing the cartoon character, the crazy kid who does not understand fear. Yet this young Briton’s assault on the world heavyweight title is not a fleeting flash of lunacy; it has been on his mind for most of his life.
   
   On November 7, Haye will box Nikolay Valuev, the Russian who holds the WBA title, and this is how heavily — comically — the bout is stacked against him. Valuev has been competing at heavyweight for all 16 years of his professional life; Haye has fought only once at that weight. Haye is, by nature, a cruiserweight, which is why Valuev, given that he is the biggest world heavyweight champion ever, has nine inches of height advantage and about eight stone in weight.
   
   When he talks about this assignment, it gives Haye pleasure to remind you how foolish it is. “People physically can’t see how I can beat him,” he said, and he chuckled deeply. “How I can reach his head? If you can’t hit him, how are you going to hurt him?”
   
   But let the talking continue and he will convince you that he can hardly lose. Among Haye’s many attributes is a self-confidence that towers to the point of parody. This interview began in north Cyprus in May when Haye was training for his aborted bout against Vitali Klitschko and it continued last week in London. But whoever he is boxing, wherever he is talking, the tone is the same.
   “I don’t know if Klitschko thinks I’m a nutter,” he said in May. “But either way, he wants to smash me up, which is heart-warming.”
   
   And of Valuev last week: “He’s a humungous unit and when I take him down, just the pictures alone will send shock waves around the world.”
   
   This is Haye patter. He tells a story about the highlight of his primary school days in Bermondsey, southeast London: his Friday fight, every week a pre-arranged scrap, invariably with an older boy. He would, he said, spend his whole week daydreaming about it. And no, he never lost.
   
   Even as a three-year-old, he said, “My dad’s party piece was telling his pals to put their hand out so his son could punch it. They couldn’t believe how much power I had.”
   
   So, yes, this is a man whose belief in his physical assets has been massaged all his life. Somewhere there is a point where self-confident pugilist ends and role-playing, comic-strip king of the ring takes over, but you suspect Haye confuses the two as much as anyone.
   
   Reality lies in the fists of the leviathan Russian and there is a romance in the (comparatively) little guy wanting to be lord of the giants. Evander Holyfield and Roy Jones Jr achieved it and Haye remembers the detail all too well, two nights of boxing that shaped his ambition.
   
   One: Jones versus John Ruiz, Las Vegas, March 2003. “Amazing night,” Haye said. “I watched it on a big screen in Miami where I was training for a fight. I was already telling people I was going to be heavyweight champion and people were saying, ‘Are you big enough?’ Jones was my idol at the time and I was really worried for him before the fight: what happened if this big guy hit him? But he fought a very smart fight and proved that a fighter with greater speed and skill can beat a guy who’s bigger. That fight gave me confidence. That was big motivation.”
   
   Two: Holyfield versus Mike Tyson, November 1996. “I was at home in Bermondsey when I watched that,” he said. “I had the same fear for Holyfield as I did for Jones a few years later. He was the underdog, Tyson was the baddest man on the planet. I remember thinking, ‘He’s going to get destroyed here.’ But slowly he broke Tyson’s spirit. I remember going bananas.”
   
   Holyfield and Jones set down the blueprint, now Haye has his chance to emulate his heroes. He could — perhaps should — have worked his way up through the heavyweight division rather than starting at the top, but the approach he has taken is another reflection of his personality. He did not fancy, he said, “the easy route, picking off the weakest of the bunch”.
   
   What he prefers is “the schoolground mentality where you pick on the biggest, toughest kid in the playground to prove you are No 1.”
   
   Haye rather likes baiting them, too. Google the words “Valuev” and “ugly” and you will find a fistful of quotes under Haye’s name. And he likes his gimmicks; his T-shirt depicting the two Klitschko brothers with decapitated heads was one of which he was particularly proud. So besides Holyfield and Jones, his other heroes have been boxers who pushed the twin boundaries of sportsmanship and showmanship: Naseem Hamed, Chris Eubank, Muhammad Ali. If it was not already clear, Haye is not content with just being a champion, he wants to be a “character”, too.
   
   “I’ve always liked the baddies,” he said. “Watching pro wrestling when I was a kid, I used to root for the baddie: The Undertaker, The Rock, guys who made you want to take notice. I’ve sort of slipped into that. I don’t want to be the cheesy guy.”
   
   Yet for all his desire to be the showman, the “Hayemaker” is not the creation of an over-ambitious marketing department. This all comes naturally to him, he is simply turning up the volume as his career reaches its peak. And there is a hard edge to him, too, as there has to be.
   
   He has little time for the tradition of respect among boxers. “I don’t give respect to someone just because he’s a boxer,” he said. “Respect has got to be earned.”
   
   And he makes no apology if he oversteps the mark that Hamed, in particular, used to reside the wrong side of. “There’s a fine line between cockiness, confidence and arrogance, and I bounce in between them,” he said.
   
   He understands, too, that all his talk and bold predictions will make an a*s of him if he does not fulfil his promise against Valuev, but that is a deal he is happy with. “The small guy has to work twice as hard, be twice as fast, twice as clean and show twice the heart,” he said. “And against Valuev, I’ve got to do things I’ve never done before in training or in the gym. I’m not used to fighting guys his size. So I’ve got to make up for that by going at him with something he’s never seen before: punching from crazy angles and with ridiculous speed.”
   
   But no matter how big his heart, boxing Valuev remains an awesome yet unnecessary physical challenge. He was already king of the world — the cruiserweight world — and he could have stayed there. “But I want the world to know I’m the best heavyweight fighter on the planet,” he said. “Some people would give their left nut to be the cruiserweight champ of the world but that wasn’t enough for me.”
   
   David beats Goliath
   
   Tommy Burns v Marvin Hart, 1906, Los Angeles Burns, a 5ft 7in Canadian whose real name was Noah Brusso, beat the 6ft Marvin Hart on points over 20 rounds to become the smallest world heavyweight champion in history.
   
   Jack Dempsey v Jess Willard, 1919, Toledo, Ohio People feared for the life of the 6ft 1in Dempsey when he challenged for the world heavyweight title but Dempsey knocked down the 6ft 6Kin Willard seven times in the first round and won in the third.
   
   Lamon Brewster v Wladimir Klitschko, 2004, Las Vegas One of the most controversial title bouts of recent years. Klitschko, who is 6ft 6Kin, knocked the 6ft 2in Brewster all over the ring before collapsing from apparent exhaustion in the fifth round.
   Thanks

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2. Guest3401
   

   Watch Nikolai Valuev vs David Haye for WBA title Results, Video Replay, November 7th 2009. Nikolai Valuev is rightly nicknamed ‘The Beast From The East’ as he is the heaviest and the tallest world heavyweight champion
   
   http://www.clbuzz.com/nikolai-valuev-vs-david-haye-wba-boxing-winner-results-replay-video/

   Report (0) (0)  |   12 years, 9 month(s) ago