Loads of coverage of the Haye v Macca fight in the Sunday papers today. Saw this one in the Sunday Times and it had the first info i've seen about Haye's weight. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/article3466626.ece Not for a fighter who is carefully manipulating his body down to 14st 4lb when his natural weight – “if I had a regular job” – might be 17st. On this day he weighs 14st 13lb but he has 16 days to shed the surplus 9lb before he steps on the scales ahead of the first defence of his world cruiserweight title against his Welsh-Italian challenger, Enzo Maccarinelli. Win or lose, it will also be his last, for the process of making the cruiserweight limit is too debilitating. When he stepped away from the ring at the Palais des Sports Marcel Cerdan in Paris last November, relieved to have survived a knockdown before stopping Jean-Marc Mormeck, he acknowledged he was “very weight drained”. He had not eaten a proper meal for 17 weeks and in the 10 days before the bout had been forced to lose 14lb. “Nobody knows the agonies I went through,” he declared with a candour untypical of the majority of boxers but typical of him. “It was worth it to win these belts [The Ring’s, the World Boxing Council’s and the World Boxing Association’s] but I cannot defend them. The danger to my health is too great. The biggest risk of brain damage comes when boxers are dehydrated. Come the fight, my body was at no more than 65 to 70% efficiency. It was a risk I took – just one time. The way people get brain damage is when they are violently dehydrated, so what’s the point of having money if you end up in hospital because of it?” Good news. Also good interview with Haye from the Observer: http://sport.guardian.co.uk/boxing/story/0,,2261408,00.html Whatever happens, Haye says he is in boxing for glory, not fame. 'I couldn't care less about fame - the whole celebrity thing is a joke,' he says. 'And I've had more than one lifetime's share of women so I'm definitely not motivated by *****.' This is perhaps not entirely true. His MySpace page has a photograph of him posing with Hugh Hefner, and pictures of many of his 7,000-plus friends, most of whom seem to have an aversion to wearing clothes. 'I don't know what it is, they seem to be drawn to me,' Haye says, deadpan. So if you weren't a world champion boxer, what would you be? 'Probably a supermodel.' Well, he has modelled for Versace and Abercrombie & Fitch. Not that I get all the Sunday papers but I was being a good son and have been round my mum's today.
It's everywhere in the broadsheets today. I looked at the Telegraph, Times and Observer today and all had at least a page on the fight. Good to see the fight getting good coverage. If it was on ITV at a reasonable time I bet it would have got a pretty big audience.
Haye knew this fight would happen even when declaring he was going to heavyweight after the Mormeck fight. So I don't think weight can be used as an excuse if he loses as Haye himself admitted he didn't relax his regime too much after the Mormeck fight in preparaton for this one. Quite a good tactic to say he was going straight to heavyweight though to squeeze those extra pennies out of Warren!
Why is he already so light? A lot of fighters cut 15lbs + water weight on the day of the weigh in, then rehydrate. I'm sure he knows what he's doing but this seems odd:huh
Huh? A lot of fighters cut 10, 15, 20 (in Joan Guzman's case 26!!) pounds of water on the day of the weigh in and rehydrate afterwards. This is routine for elite fighters, so its weird that Haye, who claims to struggle so much to make weight, is virtually there so long before the fight. Muscle or fat has got nothing to do with it.
