While fight fans in the U.S. were focused on both boxing and MMA telecasts on HBO and CBS this past Saturday night, Europeans were tuned into a heavyweight title match featuring David Haye (23-1, with 22 KOs) and Nikolay Valuev (50-2, with 34 KOs).
Haye, a former cruiserweight champion from London, England, stepped into the lion’s den of Nuremberg, Germany, to fight a man who outweighed him by a hundred pounds and out measured him in height by nine inches. The boxing match itself was a bit dreadful to watch, but the smaller man managed to escape with a majority decision in his favor. Although Valuev was not the best heavyweight in the world despite having a grip on the WBA belt, he was a top five guy, so the victory was meaningful and solidifies David Haye as a real player in the division.
Why is this important? Well, putting it mildly, boxing’s heavyweight division has been on a downward trajectory since the retirement of Lennox Lewis six years ago. Actually, a very good argument can be made that the sport’s longtime glamour division has been in freefall since Buster Douglas upended Mike Tyson back in 1990. That said, David Haye with his loud and abrasive, love him or hate him persona, represents the first heavyweight in a long time that anyone actually cares about seeing.
A major star in his native England, Haye has tremendous crossover potential in the United States. He is young, good looking, aims to knock people out, talks a lot of crap and proved against Valuev that he can back it up in the heavyweight division. Let’s face it. Americans are not looking to have tea or an enlightening conversation with the heavyweight champion of the world. In our minds, the baddest man on the planet is supposed to intimidate, take chances, get hit, talk a big game and leave opponents stretched on the canvas in spectacular style. David Haye could be that man, and the very possibility of that kind of champion materializing again is exciting.
To quote the comical former heavyweight Peter McNeely, the Klitschko brothers have wrapped the heavyweight division in their own “cocoon of horror” over the last six years, marked as a dreadful period of extremely boring title matches. While nobody can deny Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko are well-schooled boxers who have learned to use their superior size to the utmost advantage, neither brings an ounce of entertainment value to the sport. Watching a Klitschko fight is like having the life force sucked out of you, aging five years over the course of any of their fights. It is an unbearable experience when one considers what the heavyweight champion of the world once represented.
David Haye simply represents hope that we will one day soon witness a heavyweight champion who comes into each match with extreme confidence and very bad intentions for his opponents. First up is former heavyweight titlist John Ruiz whom Haye must fight before May of next year or risk having his own championship stripped away. Assuming he gets by the rugged former champion, the Klitschko brothers would likely be next, and fight fans can only pray for the beginning of an exciting era for heavyweight boxing.
Source: examiner.com
(Image source: http://d.yimg.com/a/p/afp/20091109/capt.photo_1257775055499-1-0.jpg)
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