Great match up I hadn’t considered before!! No clue but would have loved to seen it. Well prime for prime Byrd was a little older but whatever.
Byrd would easily outpoint Haye. Haye was a pretty mediocre boxer actually relative to how the general boxing public perceived him. His ring generalship was always poor, he had frequent lapses of concentration, his pacing was all over the place, and his power shots were often telegraphed and left him off balance due to how recklessly he threw. A quality technician like Byrd would absolutely take him apart and make Haye look like Wilder vs Fury 1.
A prime Haye before all of the injuries had a good chance of connecting clean on Byrd and stopping him, but if Byrd makes it out of the early rounds I’d have Byrd by decision.
exept if you count golotas, Mcclines, Oquendos and Williamson who he survived with razor thin and questionable decissions
With both of their careers over we can actually look back now and gauge how they would look and perform over 12. Haye is gonna run out of gas throwing big shots and missing and getting countered. Byrd would win a decision. Haye would have to lead against Byrd and Byrd would eat him up on the counter and was elusive enough to avoid most shots and had a good enough chin to weather what got through. This would turn into an extremely ugly fight late though...........the crowd is definitely gonna be booing by round 8
This would be a slow, ugly fight. Haye isn't gonna tee off on such a defensive fighter, so his output will be absolutely ****. Byrd is so tentative that this will be a combined average of 50 punches per round for the whole fight. Haye SD