For his next dastardly trick the Jose Mourinho of the prize ring is plotting to break the mind, will, spirit and ultimately the jaw of the giant who is regarded outside South London as the best heavyweight in the world.
Be afraid, Wladimir Klitschko. And if not afraid, be very aware. It is not only David Haye who is coming to get you in Hamburg on July 2.
In their corner: Adam Booth (right) looks after George Groves (centre) and Haye (far left)
Deep in his witches’ lair beside the Thames, the Svengali to Britain’s holder of the WBA world title is already concocting his potion for the slaying of the younger of the two Ukrainian brothers who wear the rest of the heavyweight alpha-belts.
Adam Booth is now not only the trainer, manager and promoter of Haye and George Groves but their alchemist, too. Enlarge
The Special One: Adam Booth
As Groves left the dressing room at the 02 Arena en route to his upset victory over Olympic gold medallist James DeGale, Booth whispered the same message with which he sends out Haye to vanquish larger and stronger opponents: ‘The Dark Side of the Force is with you. It is the pathway to many abilities some consider unnatural.’
They call him the Dark Lord. It is a title which fits Mourinho like a cloak, also. They both play mind games with their rivals. Neither cares if they are unloved.
They both obsess about detail. Neither worries if their schemes are ridiculed by traditionalists. Both are Machiavellian. The result is all that matters and if the means of achieving it are more sinister than beautiful in the eyes of the beholders, then so be it.
Like Mourinho’s footballers, Booth’s fighters are the instruments of his hunger for world domination. Long before the unification showdown in Hamburg was contracted, Booth and Haye began insulting, offending, nagging and generally trying to disturb Klitschko mentally.
Whether it has worked we will not know until the first bell tolls in that darkened football stadium. Now they are concentrating on the battle plan which Booth believes can unhinge Big Wlad the way Haye bewildered the even bigger Nikolai Valuev and Groves ensnared the more powerful DeGale.
Only this time the shadowy pathway is devised to lead to Klitschko’s suspect chin and end in his concussive destruction.
Drawing parallels: The trainer has been compared to flamboyant Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho (right)
If so, it will be the Dark Lord’s vengeance for the broken leg which deprived him of his own career as a boxer. If so, it is likely to be achieved by a variation on the feint-hit-run-infuriate tactics which frustrated Valuev and DeGale.
‘Come and fight me,’ begged both those opponents as they pawed thin air. ‘Come and get me,’ taunted Haye and Groves. ‘Give ’em nothing,’ commanded Booth from the corner.
Many have doubted this son of an English mother and Turkish Cypriot father who was born Adam Esraef Cevdet Booth 42 years ago. Now, however reluctantly, they are coming to regard him as an unorthodox legend in the making.
As befits the Dark Lord, he trains Haye in the dead of night, not at day-break as convention decrees. You sense the bats watching as they run beneath the dank, dripping railway arches on the old river’s southern embankment. No wonder cartoons depicting Booth as the master of evil energy are circulating on in the internet.
He smiles, darkly: ‘It amuses me. I have had a super-hero costume made for myself.’ The journey from fractured boxer turned fitness instructor to mysterious lord of the ring is almost complete.
So successful was Booth as a health instructor that he numbered Kylie Minogue among his clients. Now the Hayemaker says of his Merlin: ‘It was tough for Adam to leave the lycra industry and his award-winning boxercise classes but that decision has been vindicated. We have been working for months now on rolling into a six-punch combination. The day for me to use it is coming. Only then will people believe in the power of mind control.’
Mumbo-jumbo? Not if the athlete believes it absolutely. Booth says: ‘We understand each other. That creates a bond which develops into belief and then comes conviction.’
And to hell with the non-believers. To many purists no world title should be won by back-pedalling and occasionally pot-shotting the champion, the way Haye did against Valuev and Groves against DeGale.
To which Booth has this to say, in the idiom of Rudyard Kipling: ‘Treat praise and criticism as the same imposter. You can’t absorb one and ignore the other. You can only keep the faith.’
That they will do with deepening intensity through the grinding month of preparation ahead, no matter what outsiders may think.
Haye says: ‘Perhaps it is because our camp is shrouded in so much darkness that nobody else can see the light.’
Hubble, bubble toil? and trouble for Klitschko? Jose Mourinho, for one, will not doubt it.
