NURENBERG: Ultimately, the Londoner could not deliver on his signature boast that he would send Nikolai Valuev, all 22st 8lb and seven foot of him, crashing to the canvas in the Nuremberg Arena, but, my goodness, he came perilously close.
And there is no question he did the very next best thing by becoming the first man to utterly outclass the tallest, heaviest champion in history.
The Russian had been beaten once before two years ago when Ruslan Chagaev landed a narrow, disputed points verdict but this was very different, utterly conclusive.
There was one nervous moment when it was announced that one judge scored it 114-114 but the other two verdicts of 116-112 could only have gone one way. They certainly did not flatter Haye.
When the words “from London, England” were announced there was an explosion of joy in Haye’s corner to greet one of the most monumental efforts by a British boxer.
For here was a novice, small heavyweight, outgunned by seven stones in ballast and nine inches in height, carrying out his threat of reducing
Valuev largely to lumbering impotence. He barely got caught by one decent shot to test his supposedly weak chin as he danced in and out and boxed with superb cerebral intent.
When the verdicts were read out, the forlorn giant surely knew the score already. Haye had finished his excellent performance with one blistering, stinging, swinging left hook which left Valuev tottering, trying to clear his head.
Yet even with the scent of sensation in his nostrils, Haye stayed calm, still picking his shots sparingly but beautifully.
So Haye had become the first British fighter since Lennox Lewis six years ago to hold a version of boxing’s biggest prize and one of only five Britons to have ever done so in boxing’s alphabet years. Yet none of them had ever won it with such an outlandish tale as this.
When Chagaev beat Valuev, he was 90lbs lighter; yet nobody has given away as much as the 98lbs which Haye did and still prevailed. No arguments here;
Valuev’s robotic limitations, which were always suspected, may have been at last shown up brutally but remember that no-one in 51 previous fights had been able to expose him.
You only had to be reminded of the magnitude of what he was attempting as the pair came nose to chin in the ring amid an authentic big fight buzz in the sell-out 8,000 arena. Haye looked scarily diminutive next to the champion.
The Russians, of course, are good at chess but Valuev lost the early cagey exchanges, missing regularly as Haye, working cautiously from distance, offered the more effective work, as with one lightning right-left combination in the third when he landed a couple which forced Valuev to blink.
Still, though, he would shake his vast head as if to say he was impregnable but as the fight went through half way, Valuev’s inability to make his plodding, predictable jab, jab assaults land anywhere near their intended target surely gave the challenger the advantage.
The thought still nagged away, though, that Valuev, dominating the centre of the ring and always marching forward to his monotonous, predictable beat, might be winning over the ‘home town’ votes, even though the noise from Haye’s 2,000-strong British support could have persuaded you he was the house fighter.
Valuev began to have more success as the fight wore on and Haye’s concentration and stamina was increasingly tested yet still the superior work, including one blistering right to the Russian’s head in the eighth round was coming from the Englishman.
And though Valuev enjoyed brief success in round 10, Haye’s stamina, supposedly as questionable as his suspect chin, saw him come on strong one last time.
In just an hour, Haye had turned himself into heavyweight boxing’s redeemer, a one-man rescue act designed to pump excitement and drama back into a moribund division populated by mediocrities.
On the eve of the fight, Don King, who has long had a share in Valuev’s promotion, reeled back in mock horror as it was suggested his giant asset was about to be broken. But the old ringmaster would have adored what he saw from Haye; all flash and mouth and a rare talent to back it up. What a night.
Haye revealed that an injury to his right hand had hampered his ambitions to knock out his giant opponent, even suggesting he may have broken a bone in his attempts to floor Valuev for the first time.
"I damaged my right hand in the second or third round and I tried to rein it in, which is why I went with my left," he said.
"The hand is very tender and very sore and that's why I used it irregularly.
"His head is solid, the hardest thing I've ever hit. It's like hitting a solid brick wall.
"I'm pretty sure it's broken but it's a small price to pay for being the heavyweight champion of the world."
-- Daily Telegraph