This past week Golden Boy Promotions increased its budding stable of talented young fighters with the signing of Britain's own, David Haye (21-1 KO 20). The Haymaker recently relinquished his WBO Cruiserweight title belt (soon to relinquish WBC & WBA) in order to move up to the next weight class and "clean-up" (as he so eloquently put it) the heavyweight division. Not only has he prophesized the coming of the savior in the weight class, he plans to do it all on American soil, looking to fight under the bright lights of the City of Sin, Las Vegas.Haye is coming off a Cruiserweight campaign in which he only suffered one defeat and unified the alphabet titles of the division. After his most recent fight, a second round KO over Enzo Maccarinelli, Haye had quite a bit to say about his distaste for the Heavyweight division and more specifically the only notable champion in it, Wladimir Klitschko.
I am not prepared to anoint David Hayes as the messiah of this horrible division (like so many have already done), but I do know that this type of fighter may be able to give us some excitement we haven't seen in years. He is charismatic, fast, has great knock out power and at the same time has a fairly weak chin, leaving the door open for him to be dropped. His loud mouth and highly visible antics are a perfect foil for the calm and collected champion of the division (Wlad). Just this past month Haye showed up unannounced to one of Wladimir's press conferences and confronted him. And of course he brought cameras with him (genius). Wlad seemed unimpressed.
Haye has fought in one other heavyweight bout prior to making the official move in weight. A year ago, he weighed in at 217 lbs. and faced off against Tomasz Bonin (who was 37-1 at the time and ranked 11th by the WBC). There was no evidence of Haye losing any speed or power with the jump in weight, coming out on top with a devastating first round KO (see here).
Hopefully The Haymaker can back up his mouth and really make something happen in the division. However, he will have to wait his turn in line before he gets a shot at the Russian Diplomat. Klitschko has two fights he must deal with before these two can meet inside the squared-circle, one being his upcoming defense next month against the WBO's number one mandatory challenger Tony Thompson. Meanwhile, Haye is looking to sign a fight with former world champion Shannon Briggs, and will be poised at 225 lbs. to take the division by storm.
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Recent word around the Detroit area is that a group of undisclosed promoters are attempting to put a long awaited fight together between the legendary Gary Ciccarelli, 1967 Golden Glove finalist, and the only fighter ever to defeat him, the hard hitting Biff Humphrey, who went on to take the title by defeating Ciccarelli in a controversial split-decision. Those who saw the fight claimed Ciccarelli, who fashioned his style after the late Rocky Graziano, was just plain out conditioned and was actually seen smoking a cigarette just before leaving the locker room to make his way into the ring. Word has it that Ciccarelli is taking this comeback opportunity much more seriously. He has quit smoking cigarettes switching to cigars instead, but has also been seen fraternizing at some of the local toga pipe smoking parlors wearing one of those plastic set of eyeglasses with the big nose and mustache disguising himself as Groucho Marx. More to come. By ... Geno "The Fireplug" Bambino!
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