DAVID HAYE not only promotes himself in the technical sense – Hayemaker is his company, not owned by Matchroom, Golden Boy or anyone else and David stages his own shows – he also goes out of his way to let the wider world know who he is and what he’s about. It has been crucial, along with his undoubted talent, to a successful and lucrative career. He acknowledges this to Boxing News and insists self-promotion is vital if a fighter wishes to make the big bucks. It is a belief he appears to share with some of recent history’s most decorated boxers.
“It’s not necessary but if you want people to watch you, then it is,” he says. “No one is gonna go to a channel [to watch you] if they’ve got no opinion of you one way or another. You’re not gonna get paid if no one’s gonna pay for a ticket to see you fight. You need to be an interesting person or have at least something interesting to say. A lot of people say, ‘I like to do my talking in the ring.’ That’s great, I get that, but if you go through the greatest fighters of all time they did their fighting in the ring but they did a lot of talking outside the ring. Mike Tyson, Oscar De La Hoya, Floyd Mayweather, every great fighter throughout history had a personality and without being able to express that personality, you’re just a boxer. And I don’t care about ‘just boxers’. I care about someone’s personality, what’s he like as a person? Is he interesting? A fight could happen between two real tough, hardened Mexicans that’ll be an absolute barnstormer, but I don’t know either of their names, what they’re like, their motivations; they’re just two guys fighting each other.”
#HayeDay returns to The O2 on May 21, tickets are available on general sale now via AXS.com.
