After an utterly bizarre but compelling Sky Sports Box Office contest on Saturday night, many fans have asked how much did Haye and Bellew make for their troubles.
Liverpool's WBC World crusierweight champion Bellew both defied the odds and took too long to overcome a genuinely crippled Haye in the 11th round of their altogether pointless non-title match, with the pair 'earning each other's respect' following an admittedly pulsating throwdown.
While it certainly wasn't one for the purists, the numbers speak for themselves; casual fans bought into Haye-Bellew for whatever the hell it was.
Tickets for the heavyweight scrap, which sold out in a matter of seconds back in November, brought in a gate of £2.5m, and and with Eddie Hearn's prediction that the fight would do roughly 600,000 sales reportedly coming to fruition, the pay-per-view numbers alone will amount to £10m.
Foreign TV rights (AWE in the States, for example) and sponsorship will rake in a further £1m, bringing the fight's gross earnings to £13.5m.
How much did Haye and Bellew make?
After costs (Sky's share, staging the event, etc), a whopping £7m is expected to be shared between the two fighters. We've known for the past few weeks that Haye's contract stipulated that he receive 60% of the overall purse to Bellew's 40%.
With all of this taken into consideration, Haye is set to earn £4.2m for his part in Saturday's scrap, with Bellew picking up a career-high and potentially life-defining £2.8m.
When you consider the relative irrelevance of the fight, that's quite the night's work. No wonder they were delighted with each other during their post-fight interview.
Bellew, who continuously stated in the buildup that he had only taken such a perilous fight to secure his family's future, quite understandably cut the figure of a man who had simultaneously received a presidential pardon from Death Row and won the lotto.
Eyes wide, he excitedly told the Sky microphones:
[Haye] could have picked an awful lot of different guys, but he picked me.
I have so much respect for David as a fighter. He's a brilliant fighter. He'll come again. And we can do it again! Who wants to see it again?
Like him or lump him, it was difficult to begrudge the Merseysider; written off from the word go, he went balls to the wall with one of the most ferocious heavyweights on the planet and, regardless of the mess the fight transpired to become, came out on the winning side of it.
The response to his testing the water for a rematch was at best lukewarm, but money talks. Ultimately, in all its weirdness, the fight provided an acceptable level of entertainment. Bellew will doubtless be enquiring as to the welfare of his beaten foe's achilles in due course.
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