Haye - I'll take his head off -- Sky Sports

Sky Sports

David Haye has risked the wrath of John Ruiz by threatening to take his head off.

The WBA heavyweight champion, who famously upset the Klitschko brothers by sporting a t-shirt with their severed heads on last year, says he is in the mood to deliver a blistering knockout performance at the MEN Arena on Saturday night.

Haye has been unusually subdued in the run-up to his first world-title defence, live on Sky Box Office, but exploded into life in familiar fashion with the first bell 72 hours away.

Ruiz has arrived in England with a small entourage and without his family, a man on a mission to become only the third man in history to become a three-time world heavyweight champion.

But Haye believes he has left his loved ones at home because he knows what's coming.

"I wouldn't bring my family either, if I knew I was going to get decapitated!" he told Sky Sports News.

"He's gonna get knocked out and maybe subconsciously he knows that. That's why he told his family to stay at home.

"I'm bred to do this, I'm a fighter through and through. I know what it's like to be in hard fights, I know what it's like to dig dip and I'm expecting to have to dig deep.

"I'm mentally prepared for a tough, gruelling fight - but a fight he will end up unconscious in."

Blazing

Only one person, David Tua, has managed to knock Ruiz out in 54 professional fights.

Haye will be boxing at heavyweight for only the fourth time and says concerns about his weight and physique will prove unfounded once the bell sounds on Saturday.

He only arrived in Manchester in the early hours of Wednesday morning, but insists it is merely a case of the quiet before the storm.

"I wanted to do my last hard training session in London, in my own gym," he said. "It's fine, it's only when I really get into the changing rooms that I really switch on.

"A lot of fighters switch on too early; you see them shadow boxing a week before their fight and they're burning up too much energy that they need in the fight. When I'm in the ring, that's when I'm 100 per cent, all guns blazing.

"It's all about looking, feeling and being as perfect as possible on the night of the fight. There's no need being on peak performance three weeks out - it means nothing.

"Everything myself and Adam (Booth) do is to peak when we walk into that ring. When I climb through them ropes I'm in the best physical condition I can be in and that's all that matters.

"I'm expecting a real tough night; it's going to be exciting but I am going to knock him out."