I was catatonic when that left landed! The missus was asleep on the sofa; woke her up. When the decision was announced, I lept in the air then ran to the end of the living room and punched the air in delight. A truly great night for British boxing
My 2p's worth on the fight. We all really knew it was never going to be a classic. When you fight Valuev he fights one way, extremely defensively and makes it a near impossibility to hit him. Only if you were taller than him(!!!) or quick enough can you beat him, that's what Haye was. It was a near perfect perforamance from Haye...early on Valuev was landing the jab, but by rounds 9-12 he was missing by miles and Haye was opening him right up!!! That is why he got the 12th round opening, if you look at that round Valuev is streaming forward(for him its slightly quicker) and actually looked desperate. When he got him doing the chicken dance the whole room I was in jumped up, it was amazing!! Credit to Valuev for his recovery though. He had his legs and head back VERY quickly. A great result for Haye and British Boxing. Oh and to all the haters who moan it was "a boring fight" and a "terrible performance" - David Haye has had exciting KO fights in about 20 or 21 of his 24 fights. He 95% of the time brings excitement. The problem was that if he tried to bring that attitude to this fight he would have been in trouble, he HAD to take his time and chop the tree down slowly. NO boxer is exciting everytime. Ali, Tyson, Mayweather etc have all had a stinker at one point, or had to fight a different style of fight to GET THE JOB DONE. At the end of the day Haye had a plan and won the fight. Just as if Man U beats Chelsea 1-0 after scoring a first minute goal and defending for 89 minutes, or if Tiger Woods only needs to get a 6 on a last hole so he takes irons off the tee and plays safe, ANYONE at the top of his sport will do what it takes to WIN. 3 years, 5 years, 7 years from now no-one remembers the whole fight. They will look at the history book and see the British Heavyweight Champion, David Haye!!!
A great win for Haye and he played it exactly as expected. I scored it with four rounds in Hayes favour, the same as two of the judges but was suprised they hadn't scored it much closer. Haye was clearly the much better fighter and in a rematch I'd have to go with Haye by knockout!