According to ESPN’s Dan Rafael, the highly anticipated rematch between Tony Bellew and David Haye scheduled for December 17th has been called off due to an injury to Haye. This is disappointing news for fight fans worldwide and especially for those in the United Kingdom.
A big underdog going in, former light heavyweight contender and cruiserweight titleholder Tony Bellew (29-2-1, 19 KOs) won in a big upset by eleventh round stoppage last March in their first fight. The win was marred by a bad achilles tendon tear suffered by David Haye (28-3, 26 KOs), however, since the injury left the man known as the Hayemaker largely immobile over the second half of the fight.
While there has been some speculation that Haye’s achilles injury had not healed enough to go forward with this fight, apparently it is an arm injury that is derailing the rematch instead. That could be a cover story being used to avoid people realizing that they tried to force the big money rematch through while knowing the whole time that they might not be able to go, but Haye has always been injury prone so this could just as well be a legitimate new breakdown.
For now this is being called a postponement, but we will see if the rematch ever happens now at all. It is still unclear whether or not Bellew will try to find a replacement opponent for the 17th.
