Emanuel Steward: "David Haye was acting like a Punk!"

On whether David Haye did anything that surprised him:

“No. He was exactly what I had figured. I was amazed that everyone had built him up to be such a fighter based off his talk. It’s really amazing what hype can do, and he didn’t do anything that surprised me. I always figured it was going to be an easy fight. David Haye was totally out of his league with Wladimir, not just because of his size, but the all around professionalism, the experience, the skill level, and in preparing for the fight he was the easiest opponent that I had prepared for in a long time because he doesn’t do anything but basically go back, back, have a little head movement, trying to do a little Sugar Ray Leonard type of moves, and then he’ll run at you with a barrage of punches. When he throws his first punch he’s always off balance because he throws his right hand and his right leg goes all the way through as if he was walking, and he’s always out of balance and then he comes back with a left. With these big slow guys standing there, he can hold his balance and do that, but in Wladimir’s case we were putting a lot of pressure on him cutting off the ring because he underestimated Wladimir’s foot speed.

When we can see him punching, all we would do was make him miss the first punch. Instead of blocking it just step back and he would fall all over the place. That was just the thing to create anxiety with good foot work and cut off the ring, and make him get off balance. In the last part of the fight I can see he was dipping his head back, and moving here and there, and just more into survival mode, but he was very easy to figure out. I mean it was nothing complicated at all. I was just totally amazed how everyone had expected him to come out and be like a Mike Tyson. That’s not his nature. He’s never been that way and when he fights big guys, he is seemingly fully aware and intimidated by the size of the bigger fighters and that’s exactly what he did. We figured he would fight the same way he fought Valuev and Ruiz and those guys, but they were very slow guys.

In his mind he and his buddy, more so. I refer to him as a buddy and his friend and his fan than as his trainer, and I mean Adam Booth. They just lived in a dream world. Everything about them was theatrical. It was all like a Broadway play. The antics of his before the fight, I thought he crossed boundaries with some of the things that he did with the heads cut off an all of that. A lot of fighters do things to build up hype. Every time I would listen to him speak, if I would close my eyes it would sound like I’m listening to Prince Naseem Hamed, like he rehearsed a lot of things. But Naz talked about how great he was and how he was so super, but he didn’t cross the fine line of degrading people personally, and this guy went past that with all the comments about gang ****. Then before the fight I guess he had this video game he created where he was knocking out this big Russian. That was totally a degrading comment referring to a whole race of people, all Russians. I mean that was just totally stupid. It went up to when he was at the press conference. He brought in some guy. I don’t know who the hell he was, but he’s up there saying I wrap hands illegally like I’m using Plaster of Paris or something. It was just totally baseless stuff, and after the fight he still comes in and complains that his toe was hurt, but still prior to the fight, he’s bouncing straight up and down about three feet off the ground in the ring because he was feeling so good. Then he comes in and he shows us his toe! They were distasteful and unprofessional before the fight. During the fight David Haye was acting like a punk. He was falling down every time he got close to Wladimir, dropping to his knees and looking to the referee! And then after the fight with the comments they were just very unprofessional. Normally we just take things as a win or a loss one way or another, but I didn’t even want to be even be bothered with communication with his corner or anyone involved with him too much after the fight. That’s how disgusted I was with them. It was a fraud on the public. If he would have fought more aggressively, and Wladimir himself laid back too much, but if he had been a little more aggressive or done anything the way that he spoke, it still would have been a very competitive fight.”

Complete Interview Transcripts
http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=28575&more=1

This content is protected