Bellew: “Boxing will not retire me”

Tony Bellew was enjoying semi-retirement before his wife Rachel Bellew started to hear Hearn tell her husband that he could make a fight for him against Oleksandr Usyk. Bellew had promised her he’d retire following his second technical-knockout of David Haye in their rematch May 5 in London, but the former WBC world cruiserweight champion hasn’t gotten boxing out of his system. “Everyone asks why,” Bellew said. “I was on me honeymoon and for one reason or another, I was stood there, watching Oleksandr beat up Murat Gassiev, on a mobile phone. And the fight stops, the wife gives me this look as if to say, ‘We are supposed to be enjoying our night out on our honeymoon. Why are you watching that phone?’ And then he makes the ultimate sin – he says my name and it didn’t take long. As soon as he said my name, I knew [we’d fight].” Bellew was he also knows that his fight with Usyk on Saturday night will be the last time he enters the ring as an active boxer. “Trust me, brother, that’s a fight I cannot win at home,” Bellew said. “I can’t beat her. She’s the most important thing to me in this world, alongside me kids. So I made the promise this time. That’s the only reason she agreed to it. So on Saturday night, I’ve always said this and I’ll reiterate it, I’ll say it again – boxing will not retire Tony Bellew. I will retire from boxing. “I will not go down as one of the greats, the idols I looked so – I don’t wanna disrespect any of the names by saying them – Roy Jones, Evander Holyfield – iconic names that have gone too far. I will not be one of them. I will walk [away] Saturday night and I will enjoy that walk out, and I will enjoy that ride home, with four new belts.” Bellew insists he still has the fire inside him to do whatever’s necessary to defeat Usyk. “Nothing has left me,” Bellew told BoxingScene.com following a press conference Thursday in Manchester. “You’ll see Saturday night. Believe you, me, a vicious, nasty, horrible man turns up. You will see a different me, even by the appearance of the way I turn up on Saturday. You’ll see. The horrible man that came into professional boxing turns up on Saturday night. “That’s the man that’s gonna leave professional boxing – a horrible person, a vicious, nasty [man]. You’ll just see by the appearance. Trust me, when I turn up Saturday, you will not see the nice man you’ve just seen on that stage. I will just change. You’ll just see.” Usyk will fight Tony Bellew for the undisputed cruiserweight title, at Manchester Arena, on November 10.

What a boxer said to Usyk after losing to him in 2013 now looks very interesting