There will be no more false dawns, no more bragging or bruises, no victory speeches either, for David Haye. Knocked down and out of boxing in five rounds by Tony Bellew, the former world champion at cruiser and heavyweight can leave now at 37 knowing, on balance, he has taken as much from the fight game as he has given.
“Take nothing away from David Haye,” the winner said in the ring. “He just got into a slug-fest tonight. The speed and timing go with age. I’ve done it, that’s all. Style makes fights, I’ve always said it.”
As he had conceded in their first fight, Haye said: “He was the better boxer tonight, a great champion.” Bellew did not signal the definitive end to Haye’s career, but there is diminishing hunger to watch someone who was once one of the biggest and most exciting hitters in the division.
The whistles and boos that greeted his entrance for this rematch were replaced by predictable if subdued rumbles of sympathy and maybe appreciation of his bravery at the end. Down three times in all, he probably would have carried on had there been no referee – or paying customers. The fighters’ antipathy was genuine, although it melded into mutual respect afterwards.
Bellew was a brutally magnificent finisher, biding his time, taking the odd hard head shot and pouncing like a cat when the openings came as Haye’s legs slowed.
Haye admitted in his dressing room beforehand he needed to be “a lot better” than he was here 14 months ago, when his achilles snapped in round six and he did well to reach the 11th, his corner throwing in the towel as he struggled to right himself from a tangle on the ring apron.
It is not quite right that a former world champion should be booed by sections of a 20,000 crowd just a few miles from where he was born but Haye feeds off any sort of energy, good or dark, and ignored the crowd in a lively opening.
Bellew looked to land his chopping right over Haye’s jab but his opponent was similarly disposed as they shared the second.
Haye’s jab, once his spear of choice, was cocked more than delivered in the third and Bellew seized the moment with a cracking right that sent him to the floor, followed by another that had him over again and up on wobbly legs. This time there was no injury to blame – just his own intemperance, as well as the weight of the years that had gone before.
The fourth descended into a thrash but Bellew was in total control, stalking and firing bombs. Haye, hurt and disoriented but still there to have the argument, looked as if he could go at any moment, his head a dart-board now.
Haye needed to make a statement even to get past halfway but the narrative was out of his hands. Bellew, so emotional outside the ring, had turned into a cold-eyed predator, wary of his wounded foe but ready to strike again. There was a lull in the fifth, then another teeth-rattling left hook to put Haye down in the centre of the ring. As proud as any British fighter of recent years, the Bermondsey man knew the end was near but he did not want it, surely, to be at the intervention of the referee while he was still standing with his back to the ropes.
Then again, very few boxers get to choose the manner and time of their leaving. This had to be Haye’s.
The Olympic silver-medallist Joe Joyce, who is in Haye’s stable and shares his new Cuban trainer, Ismael Salas, stepped up a few levels in just his fourth professional bout earlier to win the Commonwealth heavyweight title by stopping the seasoned but bewildered Jamaican champion, Lenroy Thomas in two rounds. Joyce, still learning his trade at 32, had the champion down three times and was landing at will. A left hook to the jaw finished the job. He will harder nights than this from now on.
Rio bronze medal light-heavy Joshua Buatsi – one of the few pros with a university degree - racked up his sixth paid win, stopping the Frenchman Stephane Cuevas in the fifth of six.
There was woe for the fancied Martin J Ward, who was beaten and stopped for the first time in his 22-bout career, when he found the heavy hands of the Belfast super-feather James Tennyson too much to cope with in the fifth round of their Commonwealth, European and WBA International title fight. He had Tennyson on the floor in the second but was drawn into a brawl and sank to the ropes twice at the end, dazed and hurt.
Paul Butler, who lost a challenge for the world super-fly title three years ago, overshot the bantamweight limit by more than 3lbs on Friday, and had nothing to fight for but a pay cheque and pride. The latter was dented in the first round when the unbeaten Puerto Rican, Emmanuel Rodríguez, felled him with a wicked left. Butler, 29, regrouped and had his moments but not enough to dominate a round and the visitor was a convincing winner of the vacant IBF title, by two cards of 120-106 and one of 118-108.
