David Haye lost a unanimous decision to Wladimir Klitschko in Germany Saturday night and revealed he was fighting with a handicap. Haye told HBO’s Larry Merchant that he suffered a broken toe in training three weeks prior to the fight and that it hampered his ability to push off in the ring.
“I couldn’t push off my right foot. I broke my toe, so I was unable to push off with my right foot, which is very frustrating” he told Merchant after his loss. “I broke it three weeks ago, I’ve been getting anesthetics and I’ve been trying to numb it,” he explained.
After Merchant cautioned him that bringing up the toe injury would be perceived as an alibi, Haye responded. “You can say that. I didn’t tell anyone about my injury, I didn’t want to alert anybody. I was hoping with a local anesthetic, with the crowd, with my adrenaline, I wouldn’t have felt it, but I was unable to push off my right foot and land my trademark haymaker. That was very frustrating for me.”
The kicker came when Haye took his shoe off and directed cameras to film his foot so the audience could see his broken toe. Check out his little piggy:
It was hard to tell from the shot which toe was broken, but I don’t doubt that he was limited in the fight. It would have been extremely difficult to call the fight off after the years we’ve all waited to see it, so it’s understandable why he was reluctant to do so. Ultimately, if he weren’t in good enough condition for the fight, he should have asked to postpone it. Because he deemed the injury enough to fight through, I won’t use it as a caveat when recalling the fight in the future. He may have been at a disadvantage but he was dominated.
And if the toe were such an issue, he should have done this.
