Haye was a fairly effective Cruiser and mostly a runner at heavyweight. Don't like runners and don't know why they get decisions for that.
Glassed me! He Glassed me! He was the most exciting thing to come through the heavyweight division in a while when he moved up. He could have done more for sure and I think the Wlad fight hurts the outlook on his career more than it should. Of course the excuses and theatrics didn't help either. But Wlad was an atg big man who for the most part fought perfect, safe gameplans against smaller guys. Haye wasn't a midget but I don't think he beats Wlad no matter how many times he could face him. I wish we had a chance to see him in with different styles at heavyweight but it is what it is. I'd say underrated but only a bit.
True. Haye's awkwardness, explosive power, hand speed, head movement, against larger men is really not so much a size disadvantage the way we actually saw it work against real heavyweights. Because it's compensated for by having as good or better power than those heavyweights and far more maneuverability. Haye was a very good heavyweight and a potentially great cruiserweight champion, had he stayed there. Monte Barret, I'm not sure what his stakes in it would've been to say it wrongly but he was smashed up by Haye and Wlad and said they had comparable power. Haye carried dynamite in his gloves. I can't take that away from him.
He's evocative of the old story.... For want of a nail, the shoe was lost, for want of the shoe, the horse was lost for want of the horse, the rider was lost for want of the rider, the battle was lost for loss of the battle, the kingdom was lost. All for the want of a horse-shoe nail ! Just imagine how great Haye could have been if only he'd been blessed with better pinkie toes !
No, he's overrated, both his HW and CW careers. His CW career was over in a heartbeat, no longevity or depth whatsoever, and his HW career was just a series of disappointments, punctuated with injuries, punctuated with baseless rhetoric about how he was going to save the division and do away with Wlad. His one win of note, and the only one I give him credit for, is his win over Chisora. But if that's all you've got to show for yourself you're batting at a very low average. Absolutely horrendous commentator and pundit as well.
I respect him as being a good boxer and a great puncher, but he was chinny and he knew it. He cherry-picked his way through his career and left without much to show for it.
On the subject of the whole Toegate thing, I actually genuinely think that fighting with a broken toe is probably painful and all that, but what I really don't understand, and why he got - and still gets - ridiculed for it is that he shouldn't have mentioned it and accepted the loss with good grace. If it was such a big deal he should have cancelled the fight - he has cancelled others after all. But if u go and fight with an injury, don't ***** about it after the fact
At the time how little we knew or I did at the time I thought haye would take off furys head off. But then he pulled out twice when I had tickets for that fight so **** him. Still the best press conferences every though.
For all his talk Haye didn’t do much. The Valuev fight was a disgrace one of the most boring fights ever. His fight with Wlad was another disgrace he talked and talked and talked then showed up and just tried to survive 12 rounds then made a bunch of excuses