By Edward Chaykovsky

WBC cruiserweight champion Tony Bellew admits that he actually wrote a will before his scheduled fight with David Haye.

The fight with Haye took place on March 4 at the O2 Arena in London, and Bellew was a massive underdog in the contest.

Most observers were predicting a knockout victory for Haye in the early rounds. The complete opposite played out in the contest.

Bellew upset the odds by taking Haye into the later rounds and stopping him in the eleventh round. The Liverpool fighter had some help, after Haye ruptured his Achilles in the sixth round and from that point became a one-legged target.

In the weeks leading up to the fight, Haye had promised to end Bellew's career by sending him to the hospital with severe injuries. Haye warned Bellew that he was risking his life by going forward with the contest.

Bellew, a father to three kids, took the threats seriously.

“There’s people in situations and it’s very, very frightening. The situations some fighters have been in recently. I’ll be honest, it scares me,” he told Boxing News.

“People don’t know this but I wrote a will before that fight. It’s the only time I’ve ever done it in my whole career. I wrote a will two weeks before leaving everything to my missus in case anything happened to me because I knew he was capable of really, really hurting me.

“Don’t get me wrong, I knew I’m capable of hurting him too. That’s the extreme measure I went to. To hear this guy saying the things he was saying, I just found it absolutely disgusting.”

Haye, a former two division champion, has since had surgery for the injury and intends to fight again by the end of the year. He would like to get a rematch with Bellew, who himself has a lot of options right now at cruiserweight and heavyweight.