Making the team

George Groves kicks off his Hayemaker fight week diary as the team wrap up their UK preparations and get ready for Germany. Well, the chosen few anyway...

Intro - Taking you behind the scenes with Haye in Hamburg

Well, I have again been drafted in by skysports.com to keep you glorious sports fans well and truly in the 'know' ahead of the final stages of the build-up for Haye-Klitschko. Yes, you will again be blessed with the poetic, thought-provoking, page-turning (there will be no pages), edge-of-your-seat reading brought to your screens by none other than... me! Apologies guys, but I had to sell it. I will be giving my account of the dailies of the Haye camp in Hamburg. What goes on in those final days? For example; will there be another hotel change like the last time we were in Germany? Will David find a suitable hairdresser to braid his hair, or will he need to fly in a specialist? And will he finally bow down to the ever-increasing demand, not of Wlad but of his adopted nation Germany, and visit the sausage factory? I will be telling all (well, not all). And in the week that follows I will be sharing more secrets than Lilian Clifford (mother of Max) at the Kingston Bingo Hall (there will be no secrets). I would like to begin with final days here in the UK before we set off for Deutschland. The gym at the moment is populated by a happy and joyous Adam Booth. His happiness I have put down to the condition his fighter is in, the joy is most probably from his feeble, dated attempted to make fun of his other fighter. We have Tom and Davide, the hired muscle. They are part-security-part wrestling-conditioning-part-body-bag-maulers. What tickles me about these two is that they are forever practising new techniques, which can cross over into boxing. They are the Howard Donald-Jason Orange of the gym, practising their 'dance moves' while normal life carries on. Yep, if you did a virtual tour of the gym as you panned round today you would see Adam strapping his thigh-highs on, Yvonne and Jon in the office, Dale with his video camera, Ruben on the Versa climber, Dr David D Haye AKA The Hayemaker holding a poster of his new app (David Haye's Knockout, available on iTunes) and finally leaning up against the bag, a podgy, scruffy looking fellow who may look the part with his boots and bandages on, but at this moment in time really doesn't have much to offer, in the (slightly rounder) shape of... me!

Demanding

Back to the man you're on here to read about: Mr David Haye; the former undisputed Cruiserweight champion of the world and now WBA Heavyweight champion. Firstly, for anyone who hasn't seen David of late you will be pleased to know he is in tremendous shape - as you would expect. Personally, I have never seen him this focused and driven during training sessions. I feel the work he has been putting in in the gym is not only more physically demanding than previous fights, due to the style of fighting he has adopted for this fight, but also just more in general. He has got a real hunger for this fight and with the finishing line in sight, not only in regards to the prep for Wlad but also in respect to his accomplished career, he has found that extra gear. We all fly out to Hamburg on Sunday... but only a select few. To be more specific a chosen eight are to fly on a private jet. I was only informed of the jet and its shortlist by the Dark Lord Adam Booth himself over the telephone, which he summed up by saying 'there's only six or eight seats, I don't think you're on it'. As you can imagine my heart dropped. It had been less than a month since I too had toppled an Olympic fraud, had my Twitter followers jump from 3,000 to 16,000 ( @stgeorgegroves BTW if you want to follow me) yet now I was nothing more than yesterday's organic carrot, spinach, beetroot, celery, pineapple, red peppers, yellow peppers, ginger, cherries and aloe-vera juice. Later on Adam Bluff told me I had made the team sheet and I will have my seat amongst kings, with those most important. I celebrated with some sugar. Anyways, I apologise for rambling on about myself. There will be far more Haye news and views once we land in enemy territory, and you will know all the goings on from me. Until then, auf wiedersehen pet!

Got a question for George?

Want to know a bit more about what goes on behind the scenes? Why not ask George by filling in the feedback form below and he'll pick out the best one each day...