Smack-talk hasn’t been pretty but old warrior David Haye deserves more credit

It is a fight with a sense of an ending. David Haye and Tony Bellew are both, they freely admit, coming towards the final rounds of their careers and aiming to finish strong. To finish with a bang. To finish one another. Just to finish.

After they meet in the O2 Arena on May 5 we may see one or both retire. Bellew speaks of returning to the cruiserweight division, where both had much of their success and where the Liverpudlian, at least, more properly belongs.

Haye says he will definitely quit if he loses — and will think seriously about jacking it all in if he fails to win every single round. So as with their first fight in March last year, there is plenty to think about in a contest that is well-made, if not very consequential in the bigger picture of the heavyweight division.

On Tuesday Haye told the Standard that he is feeling tranquil as he approaches the end. But he is also desperate to prove a point. “I don’t want to be known just for selling tickets and pay-per-view television,” he said. He won’t. Haye has been a better servant to British boxing than is often allowed — even if his pre-fight smack-talk has often been crude.

But like many an ageing warrior, as the chance of real dominance over his division recedes he has begun to think of his legacy. I first heard Haye talk of retirement more than 11 years ago, in the autumn of 2007, as he was preparing to fight Jean-Marc Mormeck in Paris.

That fight earned Haye the WBA and WBC cruiserweight titles and launched the most successful period of his career, which included the unification of the cruiser belts against Enzo Maccarinelli and his brief reign as a heavyweight champion between beating Nikolai Valuev in 2009 and losing the WBA belt to Wladimir Klitschko two years later.

Haye was only 27 years old and was fond of saying that he would give up boxing before his 31st birthday. “I don’t want to end up blowing bubbles,” he said.

A decade and more on, Haye is now 37 and still fighting. But he has been through the wringer. A rash of injuries have restricted him to just ten fights since he beat Mormeck and, of course, his Achilles pranged mid-fight against Bellew and cost him the chance of finishing the bout.

The consequent inactivity means he has almost certainly missed his window for a match against Anthony Joshua. Hence: Bellew, twice. A banging win for Haye might justify making it a trilogy.

Whatever happens, the end is in sight. The bookies have Haye as the odds-on favourite but Bellew looks leaner and meaner than he did last year.

Haye-Bellew II should do what it says on the tin: a grudge match between two old-timers looking to have the final word before they hang up their gloves. It would be a miserable boxing fan, indeed, who didn’t warm to the sound of that.