David Haye vows to go into hiding if John Ruiz takes his title -- Mirror

By David Anderson, Mirror.co.uk

David Haye claims he will hide away for a year if he loses his WBA heavyweight title to John Ruiz. Haye is desperate not to suffer the same fate as Frank Bruno did in 1996 when he lost his crown to Mike Tyson in his first defence.

The two-weight world champ says he was gutted for Bruno back then as a teenage fan.

The South Londoner admits losing to Ruiz tomorrow at Manchester's MEN Arena after claiming the title from Nikolai Valuev would be even worse than when he suffered his only pro defeat to Carl Thompson in 2004.

"Winning the title and then losing it to John Ruiz would be devastating," said Haye at yesterday's head-to-head at Manchester Town Hall.

"I'd be devastated by that. It would feel a lot worse than I did when I lost to Carl Thompson.

"Then I had the excuse of being a novice. This time I have no excuse. After the Carl Thompson defeat, I went away for a couple of weeks. This one would be so much worse, I'd probably want to duck out for a year. Just get away from everything.

"Every champion knows the high of winning can quickly turn to the opposite feeling if things go wrong in the first defence.

"I remember Frank Bruno winning the title then losing it.

"He went from such a high when he won to getting blasted by Mike Tyson. I remember being on a real downer afterwards - and that was just me as a fan.

"That fear of losing is my main motivation. I've got to believe I'm a true winner and that's all I'm thinking about. I just want people to know I'm the best.

"People talk about fighters being two-time or three-time, I want to be the one-time undisputed champion. That's the plan."

Haye, 29, knows his dreams of beating the Klitschko brothers to unify the heavyweight titles rest on this first defence against twotime champ Ruiz and his mentor Adam Booth claims the American is dangerous.

Haye's manager and trainer rubbished talk that at 38, Ruiz is past it, claiming he has been rejuvenated under new trainer Miguel Diaz.

"John Ruiz is the hardest fight out there for David and there's only Vitali Klitschko who can compare," said Booth. "John Ruiz is a seasoned and successful heavyweight, who has been at the top for a long time.

"I've watched a lot of his tapes and I'm seeing a lot of the little signs, the signs that make you recognise that he has been renewed.

"People say that at 38, his best days are behind him, but I don't agree with that. I believe John Ruiz's worst days are behind him and that his best days are now. We have prepared accordingly."

Ruiz, who is bidding to join Muhammad Ali and Evander Holyfield in the exclusive club of three-time world heavyweight champs, has been in training in Las Vegas for three months and Diaz doubts Haye's stamina.

He feels the Hayemaker's struggles against Giacobbe Fragomeni in 2006 when they fought for the European cruiserweight title before he won in the ninth suggests he may not be able to handle the pressure.

"Haye was winning up to the fifth round and he was then in trouble and was cut," said Diaz.

"I know he eventually won, but that tells me that I don't know if he can take the heat in the kitchen."

Haye laughed off Diaz's claims and feels Ruiz's camp are getting desperate if they have picked out that fight as a sign that he is vulnerable.

"I knocked him out in the ninth round, so I don't know what confidence they can take from that," he said.

"If Ruiz is expecting that David Haye to turn up, he's going to be disappointed. I'm bigger, faster, stronger than then."

Source: mirror.co.uk

The Cat hopes Haye has learnt his lesson -- BBC Sport

By Ben Dirs, BBC Sport

Pain is relative, so when Carl Thompson tells you David Haye hasn't been tested since he beat Britain's current heavyweight world champion back in 2004, it would be foolish not to take into account Thompson's stratospheric threshold.

There were times when watching a Thompson bout was like watching a sculptor working with a set of children's tools, his opponent's blows ricocheting off all parts until the tools were bent and broken and pretty much useless.

"I was thinking, 'I'm going to knock him out'," says Haye of the night he suffered his only professional defeat to date. "And it didn't happen." "I was a very hard person to fight," explains Thompson. "To David that fight was hard, to me it was just an everyday thing."

Six years earlier Thompson had brought Chris Eubank's career to a juddering halt, and only a few months before his fight with Haye, Thompson was pulverised for nine rounds by South African Sebastiaan Rothmann before dredging up a huge right hand and turning the fight on its head. Unlike the cricketer Phil Tufnell, Thompson was nicknamed 'The Cat' for his infinite lives rather than his ad hoc sleeping habits.

In his fight against Haye he was very nearly stopped in the first, before Haye blew himself out and Thompson blew him away. "I learned my lesson not to be complacent a long time ago," says Haye, "but it's still fresh in my mind." Fresh as a gale force wind.

On Saturday in Manchester, Haye makes the first defence of his WBA heavyweight crown against two-time world champion John Ruiz, but Thompson, still dreaming of a comeback at the age of 45, is yet to be convinced of his old rival's credentials, uncertain the lessons have been learnt.

"David needs to show me a little bit more to prove to me he has learnt because the people he has fought since me haven't really tested him," says the former cruiserweight world champion.

"Even when he beat Nikolay Valuev for the world title, that big guy, 7ft 2in, never used his height or weight advantage, he didn't use anything, he just let David take the belt off him.

"I'm a very hard person to please, but if John Ruiz can test him a bit more and David can beat him, then that would go some way to proving I at least taught him something."

While Thompson was 40 when he defeated Haye, the grizzly Ruiz is 38 and a veteran of 53 pro fights (44 wins, eight defeats and one draw), 10 of them with a world title at stake. His clinch and grab style has made him perhaps the most maligned fighter of his generation, yet the truth is he has one of the most impressive resumes of any heavyweight fighting today (which, critics would argue, only goes to show how far the division has fallen).

In a career stretching back to 1992, Ruiz has been in with Tony Tucker (won), Evander Holyfield (one loss, one win, one draw), Roy Jones Jr (lost), Hasim Rahman (won), Andrew Golota (won, despite being down twice) and Valuev (losing narrowly twice). Win, lose or draw, even his harshest critics would have to admit 'The Quiet Man' brings a tremendous amount of experience to the party.

"There are similarities," says Thompson. "I knew I could beat David because I knew he had never been in hard fights like I'd been. When he came up against me, he must have been shocked, and Ruiz will be hoping for the same."

Ruiz's new trainer, the venerable Argentine Miguel Diaz, says his charge will be boxing rather than wrestling at the MEN Arena, while Ruiz himself, who has been whittled down to 16st, has spoken of taking Haye out of his comfort zone by throwing 50 punches a round. It is a tactic Thompson approves of, but he is not convinced Ruiz has what it takes to follow it through.

"John Ruiz is similar to my style in that he will come forward," says Thompson, "but coming forward is not necessarily the same as applying pressure. I applied a lot of pressure, even when David came at me I still came at him.

"How you fight David is you let him steam at you, try to blast you out, and then you've got to attack him straightaway, so that you're forcing him to work when he doesn't want to work.

"That's the key for John Ruiz, but I don't know if John is capable of doing that, making David fight when he doesn't want to fight. It's a bit too late for changing things now, and I'm not sure John ever had what it took in the first place."

"He'll be thinking that, coming forward, getting through the early onslaught, he'll try to get me in the second half of the fight," says Haye. "But he doesn't realise that early onslaught is going to be so extensive he'll be lucky to be there for the second half of the fight.

"I have to see John Ruiz as the toughest fight of my life, simply because he is. If I lost to John Ruiz, it would be catastrophic. All that hard work, the win against Valuev, would mean nothing.

"I've got to produce the same performance as I did against Valuev, pure class, pure skills, and I'm positive I will get the knockout. I'm going to have to produce something special to get him out of there, but I will do it."

There's a great line from BBC commentator Jim Neilly, just as Haye is starting to wane against Thompson: "Is he going to get a lesson from an old fella whom everybody has just about written off?" He could have been speaking about Ruiz - we'll find out on Saturday whether The Cat's lesson has been learnt or not.

Source: bbc.co.uk

The Cat backs Haye -- Sky Sports

Sky Sports

Carl Thompson is the only man to have beaten David Haye - and hopes that will still be the case come Sunday morning.

The Manchester man will be watching when his former cruiserweight foe defends his world heavyweight title against John Ruiz at the MEN Arena on Saturday, live on Sky Box Office.

He famously stopped Haye in five rounds back in 2004 in what remains the only blemish on the WBA world champion's 24-fight record.

And although he was happy to share his blueprint for success, Thompson - known as The Cat - is hoping history does not repeat itself and that the Hayemaker retains his title.

"I'm sure he can - and I'll be quite happy to sit in my armchair and put my slippers on and say I'm still the only man!" he told Sky Sports News.

Haye says that defeat, in which Thompson's rope-a-dope tactics led him to punch himself to a virtual standstill, was a blessing in disguise and taught him a valuable lesson.

He has not lost a fight in the subsequent six years and has even had to climb off the canvas to win, most notably against Jean-Marc Mormeck in Paris in 2007.

Patient

"I hope that he has learned that you can't just take everyone out, that you've got to be patient at times, work your way in and win the fight," said Thompson.

"It shows he can be knocked down because in one or two fights before that he got knocked down, but the sign of a good champion is one who can always gets back and win.

"He's climbed off the floor after he got beat and now he's the world heavyweight champion."

Ruiz says he will drag Haye into a war and is no stranger to going the full championship distance, but is 38 and will be boxing for the 55th time as a professional.

He is known for an uncompromising style and says he will keep coming forward all night long - a tactic that Thompson says is the best way for him to win.

"You've got to go in there and think I'm gonna win the fight, no matter what; use pace, put David under pressure, don't give him time to set his punches," he said.

"And if he does hit you, you need to put the pressure back on him."