David Haye is no more. The former two division titleholder and British money maker has announced his retirement from the fight game. We also have news on David Benavidez’s contract situation, the World Boxing Super Series’s Season Two, and more.
- First, following consecutive stoppage losses to blown up cruiserweight Tony Bellew, former heavyweight titleholder David Haye (28-4, 26 KOs) has elected to retire from the sport of boxing. Few men have drawn more eye balls to the ring in Britain over the last decade plus. Haye’s rise started soon afternoon turning pro in 2002. Within five years he was a dynamic, unified cruiserweight titleholder and an emerging star. He moved to heavyweight and generated a lot of hype in doing so in 2008. Though he never lived up to the talk at the bigger weight, the Hayemaker did pick up a belt from Russian seven foot freakshow attraction Nikolay Valuev and use it to help talk his way into a major money fight with division king Wladimir Klitschko. After his non-performance in that fight, Haye fought once more before retiring for four years prior to his ill fated return to the sport in 2016 that ended a little over a month ago with a second stoppage loss to Tony Bellew. This time the retirement is certainly more likely to stick. Even though he is no longer a world level fighter and maybe has never been above cruiserweight, the sport lost a real character in David Haye with his retirement.
- The promotional saga of David Benavidez (20-0, 17 KOs) has reached its conclusion. He will be returning to Sampson Lewkowicz and Premier Boxing Champions rather than fighting under the Top Rank banners. Apparently, the short version of the story goes like this: Top Rank reviewed the 21 year old’s contract with Lewkowicz and considered it unenforceable. They then offered Benavidez a deal of their own complete with a $250,000 signing bonus and he accepted. Lewkowicz erupted and threatened litigation, but it didn’t matter because Benavidez himself went back to Top Rank and said he changed his mind. While he had signed the contract, the promotional giant figured it wasn’t worth fighting a legal battle to keep a fighter that didn’t want to be there. They set him free provided he returned the signing bonus, which he did. Now we are back where we started with David Benavidez as a PBC fighter.
- New WBO junior welterweight titleholder Maurice Hooker (24-0-3, 16 KO) has elected to join the World Boxing Super Series’s Seaon Two welterweight tournament. That is turning into a pretty nice field. Seven of the eight spots are now filled and are, other than Hooker, as follows: Ivan Baranchyk (18-0, 11 KOs) of Russia, Anthony Yigit (21-0-1, 7 KOs) of Sweden, Regis Prograis (21-0, 18 KOs) of New Orleans, Cleveland’s Ryan Martin (22-0, 12 KOs), WBA titleholder Kiryl Relikh (22-2, 19 KOs) of Belarus, and Russian former titleholder Eduard Troyanovsky (27-1, 24 KOs). Hopefully whoever fills the IBF’s vacant title at the division gets the eighth spot. We aren’t getting WBC titleholder Jose Ramirez due to his Top Rank status, but the other three would be nice.
- Finally, now that Gennady Golovkin has been removed as IBF middleweight champion for not fighting mandatory challenger Sergey Derevyanchenko (12-0, 10 KOs), the title needs a new owner. To fill this the IBF has ordered Derevyanchenko to meet their next highest rated contender to fight for the title. That would be Danny Jacobs (34-2, 29 KOs) and a quality fight. Of course, Jacobs is in the running to meet Canelo Alvarez this fall and wouldn’t take this fight if that was the case. If that were to happen, Jermall Charlo would become the next highest ranked available contender. As long as Charlo sticks with PBC, he and Derevyanchenko would be a very easy in house fight to make too. As much as we want to see GGG v Canelo 2, at least we have the reassurance of good fights however all this plays out.
