Haye ready for heavyweight?

Bernard Fernandes/Maxboxing.com

Possessing a shiny championship belt in the cruiserweight division is and always has been like one of those “nice parting gifts” they give losing contestants on game shows. Oh, sure, being the best cruiserweight in the world, or one of them, is better than nothing, but it’s not exactly like winning the top showcase on “The Price is Right.”

For the cruisers, not only isn’t the price right, neither is the poundage. You’re too large to be a light heavyweight, one of boxing’s eight traditional weight classes and the division that spawned such all-time greats as Billy Conn, Archie Moore, Ezzard Charles, Bob Foster and Roy Jones Jr. You’re too undersized to be a heavyweight in an era where the better performers are very large men who would tower over the legendary likes of, say, Jack Dempsey and Rocky Marciano. The basketball equivalent of a cruiserweight would be the 6-5 college star snubbed by the NBA because he doesn’t handle the ball well enough to play guard or isn’t tall enough to cut it at forward.

It’s no surprise then that David Haye, perhaps the most intriguing cruiserweight to come along since Evander Holyfield in the mid- to late 1980s, has decided to follow in Holyfield’s footsteps and take a run at bigger opponents and much fatter paydays. Upon blasting out WBO titlist Enzo Maccarinelli in two rounds on March 8 in London’s O2 Arena, Haye, who already held the WBC and WBA belts, made it official: He would henceforth campaign as a heavyweight, forsaking a chance to get it on with IBF cruiser king Steve “USS” Cunningham for absolute dominion among 200-pounders.

“The Hayemaker doesn’t lie! I’m a class above! He’s the No. 2 cruiserweight in the world. I’m No. 1 and the difference between 1 and 2 is big,” shouted Haye (21-1, 20 KOs), who has the same chiseled physique that the young Holyfield did when he concluded that chasing Mike Tyson was more prestigious and profitable than beating up all the Carlos De Leons that might come his way. And as history so clearly has demonstrated, that decision was the correct one.

Which is not to say that emulating Holyfield – or Charles, Moore, Foster and Jones, all of whom made forays into the heavyweight division with varying degrees of success - is the proper course of action for every tweener who convinces himself that a few extra pizzas or the hiring of a physical conditioning guru will make all the difference. O’Neil Bell and Jean-Marc Mormeck are reasonably entertaining when duking out themselves or with their peers, but its difficult imagining their hanging in for long against the more powerful arsenals to which Wladimir Klitschko and Samuel Peter have access. As terrific a light heavyweight as Bob Foster was, don’t forget how he fell apart like a house of cards when clipped by a Joe Frazier left hook. Like Sean Connery so memorably pronounced in “The Untouchables,” you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.

Even given the meager history of those attempting the step up, the cruiserweight division at least still can claim to being a sort of farm club to the heavys. Cruiser champions are like home run leaders and guys with high batting averages in Triple-A. They bring credentials to the table in some instances. But for every Holyfield, and maybe Haye, there are a dozen washouts like former IBF champ Al “Ice” Cole, who learned the hard way that getting bigger did not necessarily make him better.

So why do I think Haye might be the cruiserweight to make the transition better than anyone since Holyfield during last days of the Reagan administration? I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I desperately want to believe, like many others frustrated by the dearth of legitimate, world-class heavyweights, that we have a chance at someone and something capable of getting us excited again.

There have always been false prophets among the heavyweights, shooting stars that lit up the skies and then disappeared as quickly as they arose. For a time, fight fans allowed themselves to get swept up in the hoopla attendant to the rise in the rankings by Duane Bobick, Gerry Cooney, Tommy Morrison, Michael Grant and Ike Ibeabuchi.

Personally, I think Cooney had the potential to be the genuine article. Ask Larry Holmes about the power in that left hook. But Cooney was too sensitive and overprotected by his handlers, who didn’t want to kill off the golden goose until he laid a couple more golden eggs in low-risk fights. Flawed as he was, if Cooney were to come along today he not only would be an alphabet champion, he might even be The Man.

Ibeabuchi was another shimmering oasis in a scorched-earth landscape. When he outclassed such disparate opponents as slugger David Tua and fancy steppin’ Chris Byrd, I was sure he’d play a leading role among the heavyweights for a long time. But “The President” was not quite all there mentally, and he was no more successful at suppressing his more destructive sexual urges than was Tony Ayala. So now Ibeabuchi’s prime is spent rotting in a Nevada prison, another example of squandered talent. And if you don’t think he could have handled fellow Nigerian Peter, whose raw power can be negated by his unpolished boxing skills, then you haven’t been paying attention.

At 6-3, Haye has the frame to comfortably carry, oh, another 15 to 25 pounds without sacrificing too much speed and strength. Except for the cornrows, the Londoner somewhat reminds me of the young Holyfield as he set off on his own journey of heavyweight self-discovery two decades earlier.

Haye’s preferred opponent for his heavyweight debut is former WBC champion Hasim Rahman, who, at 35, has become one of the gatekeepers every prospect needs to get past to establish his big-man bona fides. “The Rock” is on the downhill side of his career, but he probably has enough left to at least ascertain whether Haye is pretender or contender.

If Haye does to Rahman what Holyfield did to James “Quick” Tillis, there just might be hope for the heavyweights yet.

Holyfield had fully unified the cruisers on April 9, 1988, stopping De Leon in eight rounds at Caesars Palace to add the Puerto Rican’s WBC title to the WBA and IBF crowns he already held. Commander Vander was the best the division had ever seen, and remains so to this day. But he wanted more.

He wanted Mike Tyson.

So it was that Holyfield and I both ventured into the high Sierras to determine if the mission he was about to undertake was feasible or merely delusional. Tillis, one of only four fighters to have gone the distance with Tyson to that point, had lost six bouts to heavyweights who held a version of the title at one time or another. He was the quintessential definition of a gatekeeper.

“I’m going to mess him up so bad he’s going to wish he never left (the cruiserweights),” Tillis told me after a sparring session a few days before the fight at Caesars Tahoe. “The boy is a good fighter, but I don’t see where he’s all that special. His legs are too skinny. He’s got little bird legs.

“You think some puffed-up cruiserweight is gonna scare me? Man, I been in there with the best. I fought a baldheaded guy named Earnie Shavers who was the baddest dude in the world. He hit so hard, he could turn goat milk into gasoline. But I beat him (a 10-round decision in 1982), and I’m gonna beat Holyfield.”

Tillis’ brash talk was squelched when he took such a drubbing that he did not come out for the sixth round. Holyfield, skinny legs and all, had convinced him that there was indeed a newly minted heavyweight to be reckoned with.

“If (Holyfield) moves like that, uses his legs and don’t stand in front of him, he’ll give `The Gorilla’ all he wants,” Tillis said, likening Tyson to a large jungle primate. “Holyfield is a great fighter, stronger than I thought and faster than Tyson.”

It took Holyfield nine years to get into the ring with Tyson for the first time, whereupon he finally got his chance to prove Tillis correct. But by then, of course, Holyfield had already gone to war with such worthies as George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Riddick Bowe, Michael Moorer and Lennox Lewis, in the processing stamping himself as one of finest heavyweights of his era.

Haye, 27, has said he plans to be out of boxing by his 31st birthday, so his self-imposed timetable for recreating history calls for him to do a lot in a hurry. He said he wants to fight four times a year until then, so to make the sort of money he envisions he’d have to dispose of the flotsam in a hurry before mixing it up with the heavyweight division’s bigger names, such as they are. Then again, fighters who impose deadlines upon themselves seldom find it necessary to adhere to them.

Interestingly, Holyfield was at ringside for Haye-Maccarinelli, which was televised in the United States by Showtime. He professed to be so unfamiliar with both main-event fighters that at first he didn’t know who was who.

“Which one’s Haye?” he inquired before the principals were introduced. But “The Hayemaker’s” two-round wipeout lasted long enough to convince the four-time heavyweight champion that another cruiserweight had the right stuff to follow his lead.

“I hadn’t heard much about Haye until I arrived in the UK,” Holyfield said. “Well, let me tell you now this guy has a great chance of emulating me by moving up from being the undisputed cruiserweight champion to become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world … He certainly looks like a real talent to me.”

Back in his hometown of Philadelphia, Navy veteran Cunningham – who has no immediate plans to test the heavyweight waters – disputed any claims that Haye was, well, undisputed.

“Some people might say David Haye is running from me, but this is a business move on his part,” Cunningham said. “There’s more money at heavyweight, so I can’t fault him completely.

“But I do fault him for saying there’s no reason to stay at cruiserweight because he cleaned up the division. He didn’t. I’m the IBF champion and he didn’t clean me up.”

Cunningham, who also is 6-3, said he has no plans to test the heavyweight waters himself because “I don’t want to put on weight just to put on weight. I’m a cruiserweight, and I think I’m the best cruiserweight in the world. I’d prove it if I ever fought Haye. I see a lot of things in him I could exploit.

“I still think we can get him to take one more fight at cruiser, to determine who really is the best in the division. But if he moves up to heavyweight, so be it. Personally, I think he’d lose if he fights even a top 15 heavyweight.”