Hearn: Joshua-Haye is Dead, Haye Needs Bellew Rematch

By Edward Chaykovsky

Promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport is not even considering the possibility of a fight between David Haye (28-3, 26 KOs) and IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (18-0, 18 KOs).

Earlier this month at the O2 Arena in London, Haye suffered a shocking upset loss to huge underdog Tony Bellew, who moved up from the cruiserweight division to take the fight.

During the sixth round of the bout, Haye tore his Achilles. He tried to compete, but the fight was stopped in the eleventh round.

Joshua is scheduled to take part in the biggest fight of his pro career, when he faces former division ruler Wladimir Klitschko on April 29th, before a crowd of 90,000 fans at Wembley.

Should Joshua win that boutt, he will be looking for the biggest fights possible - and Hearn believes Haye is not even an option unless he is able to get revenge on Bellew.

The injury will keep Haye sidelined until the late fall at the earliest.

Bellew is planning to fight again, and there are many options at his feet - and Haye is one of them.

"Never say never, especially in the heavyweight division," Hearn said to Sky Sports. "AJ and Haye is completely dead at the moment. The only fight for Haye is Tony Bellew.

"I have listened to his social media stuff, he's got aspirations of challenging for the world heavyweight title. I think he's good enough to go on and do that, but he just got stopped by Bellew. Injury or no injury, whatever, he lost the fight. The only fight for Haye is Bellew. Bellew has five or six options. We understand the demand for Haye-Bellew II and it's certainly something that we would look at."

If they enter negotiations for a rematch, Hearn cautions that Bellew had to agree to an army of demands and stipulations from Haye. Now their positions have switched, and Bellew is likely to make a lot of demands and requirements - which may not sit well with Haye.

"Don't forget in that first fight, Bellew had to agree to a lot of things that he didn't want to, in order to get the opportunity, so that's probably going to be the biggest stumbling block," Hearn said.

"That seed is in his mind now, that now he gets those pluses out of the fight. But Tony understands it's a big fight. Tony has really built his career on having fights that the public want to see, so he's more than willing to do that next. He does talk about retiring, but I'm going to dangle so many fishes in front of him that I think that's impossible. [I expect] a shot at the world heavyweight title, or the David Haye rematch."