Spot on. Haye was a great cruiser weight but he won the title, beat Enzo and moved up. No cleaning out of a division. In fact, the very opposite. When I try to assess Haye’s career, part of me thinks about his attributes (speed and serious power) and move that in to H2H scenarios when if you actually look at his career from a non commercial point of view he did very little. Beat Enzo, Monte, Valuev, Ruiz, Del Boy with losses to Wlad and Bellew. Hardly a murderers row.
You forgot Mormeck and Fragomeni. But yeah, I don’t think anyone thinks he fought a murderers row and is an ATG. He’s one of the best Brits ever though. And up until Ruiz, had done a lot in a short space of time.
The Bellew fights don't count, they were just exhibition fights, cash outs for a shot Haye and ways for Bellew to avoid fighting the best at Cruiser, keep his unbeaten streak going and market himself to the general public to get them onside for his one last fight where everyone should have known he'd lose but the Haye fights made some people believe he could win!
He wasn't the best and that was proven in the Klitschko fight, but he was seriously good. I think we have to remember what the division looked like ten years ago when Haye moved up. You'd had an era where the likes of Maskaev, Briggs, Ibragimov, Lyakhovich, Chagaev, Peter and Valuev had all been champions, Wlad was beating a long list of fairly poor challengers with ease, and then Vitali came back and did largely the same. Haye obviously wasn't very active - 28 fights in a decade before he packed in for four years suggests he probably was quite injury prone, and this obviously played out later - so he didn't really have the chance to truly clean out a division. But I don't think you can look at Haye at cruiser and consider anyone else better that him at the weight at the time. Yes it's better to beat people than have people think you would have beaten them, but I don't begrudge him the move to heavy after he'd beaten Fragomeni, Mormeck and Enzo. And I think we do him a bit of a disservice at heavyweight really. One warm up then straight into a world title fight. He was always very open and honest about going after Klitschko and he got it.
World Class conman mate and proved it beyond any doubt when he got the mugths to hand over 2 huge bags of PPV loot v Bellew. Incredible acting skills and the type of man who can sell a parking ticket back to a Traffic Warden.
Totally agree with you mate - the only thing Toe Haye has cleaned up is the PPV loot extracted from the PPV Mugths
To the mongs out there, any loss on a record is going to be used against a fighter. A green Haye gassed against a cunning old fox looking for the KO, and paid the price. McDermott boxed the ears off a green Tyson Fury who turned up in poor shape expecting an easy win.
Really surprised to read people's thoughts on this one given Bruno's chin. Haye by quick brutal stoppage for me.
Haye had enough power and speed to potentially win but I see him skirting around the ring trying to pot shot Frank with big punches.Haye would have no answer to Brunos jab it would keep him on the back foot .I see the fight ending like the tillis bout with Haye busted up against the ropes.
Did I miss something? what elite HW did Haye beat?? The only ELITE was Wlad.I am sorry but Nikolai Valuev and John Ruiz is not elite.
Fraudley was the greatest of all time and Haye somehow managed to land a jab on him bringing a stoppage. Apart from the countless number of times Fraudley was stopped, Haye stopping big Fraudley must go down as one of the greatest achievements in the Heavyweight Division. This was a much greater test than the Stonker in Saudi where Tony Dosh PPV danced his way from combat against a very hungry Mexican who was under nourished having been deprived of his favourite burgers and pizzas for a week.
That was probably the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen in boxing. But it also set up Eddie Hearn for what he is today...
Haye became WBA HW champion and defended it twice. He was in a competitive fight against Wlad (the number 1 HW at the time). That makes him an elite HW.
