DAVID Haye insists he is ready to make history on Saturday night by becoming the first British cruiserweight to step up and win the world heavyweight title.
David Haye (left) will be dwarfed by Nikolai Valuev
Haye has travelled to Nuremberg in Germany to take on Russian giant Nikolai Valuev for the WBA title this weekend.
The former undisputed cruiserweight champion has had only one top-level heavyweight contest, beating Monte Barrett by stoppage a year ago, and after an aborted bid to dethrone Wladimir Klitschko in the summer, tries his hand against 7ft 2ins Valuev this weekend.
And the supremely confident 'Hayemaker' expects to etch his name into the record books by emulating his hero Evander Holyfield.
"No British cruiserweight has ever gone up and won the heavyweight title so I'd be making history," he told Press Association Sport.
"Evander Holyfield is the only other unified cruiserweight champion in history to go up and do the same thing at cruiserweight.
"I've got an opportunity to go out there and equal what he did by becoming the second to do it."
Haye, 29, beat undisputed world cruiserweight champion Jean-Marc Mormeck on foreign soil to take the WBC title before unifying the belts with a spectacular second-round stoppage of domestic rival Enzo Maccarinelli in March last year.
Since then he has boxed only once, stopping faded former contender Barrett in five rounds in London last November.
Haye does not expect ring rust to be a problem, however.
"It's going to be almost a year to the day since I've actually been in a ring," he said.
"I've been training, though. It's not like I've been sitting on a beach getting drunk.
"I've kept in shape the whole way through, I obviously trained for the fight with Wladimir Klitschko so it's not like my body hasn't been in shape. I just didn't have the fight at the end of it."
Haye's trainer Adam Booth insists being the 'away' fighter again is no major concern. Indeed, the location for the fight was not announced until the middle of September despite the fight being confirmed in the summer.
And after Haye's seventh-round stoppage of Mormeck in Paris, Booth is confident his man will be unaffected by fighting in front of a crowd strongly supporting Valuev.
"To be honest, we don't care," he said. "We've paid it no mind. All I said to them (promoters Sauerland) was 'you just need to let me know the exact date of the press conference' to schedule the training. That's all we need to concern ourselves with.
"David doesn't care if it's in front of 100 people. It's not going to be in England so it doesn't matter."
On the fight itself, Booth added: "David's attributes are his natural speed and athleticism and the fact he's naturally heavy-handed. But those attributes are only part of it.
"It's a psychological test, a physical test, a technical test, and that's what we buzz off. We buzz off a real challenge. Going into a fight you know you're going to win or is going to be easy, the motivation is always difficult.
"This one is for the world heavyweight championship as well, so we're buzzing."
Haye's counterpart Alexander Zimin, Valuev's trainer, has tailored their preparations specifically for the Englishman's style.
"During our preparations we have considered the individual manner of David Haye and also his size and weight," Zimin said.
"We have prepared very well for him. We have also chosen the sparring partners very well who are similar size to David and a similar style. Of course we have also used our experience from previous fights against very good opponents and did a lot of conditioning work for Nikolai generally.
"We've also done a lot on tactics and technique."
