Tony Bellew reveals what happened when he received a phone call that their initial rematch date was off – and how he was thinking at the time.

Since then they were meant to have rematch back in December but a last-minute injury in a freak accident to David Haye caused him to pull out of the bout.

Now the rematch is finally on again on May 5th at the 02 Arena in London but Bellew has not forgotten about Haye pulling out last December.

“You’ve cost me a whole year.”

Haye was quick to point out that he was financially compensated for his time lost because of the postponement.

Bellew told him that the money he earned in their last fight is all gone now and is in invested in various projects. Mentioning that:

“The money is working for me now.”

Bellew went on to mention how exactly he was thinking when he got the call back in November from Eddie Hearn that Haye had pulled out.

Speaking at their press conference Bellew revealed what happened:

“I definitely cannot repeat the words to Eddie on that phone. I was on me way to a sparring session. Dave (trainer Dave Coldwell) refused to let me spar to be honest. I wanted to actually still spar to be honest, even though the fight was off. A lot of thoughts were going through my mind. In all honesty though the actual fight wasn’t the first one, the family issues apart from that. It is what is. Injuries do happen in boxing. David has been very unfortunate that it happened to him on a number of occasions.”

The family issue above was a sudden bereavement that happened to someone in Bellew’s family at the time.

Now he appears to be in a better mind frame going into the May 5th date and although Haye will likely start out as a slight favourite, don’t write off Bellew in the rematch.

He did win the first fight, after all.