By Sean McDaniel: Though the fight between former cruiserweight champion David Haye (22-1, 21 KOs) is months away, if not more, a lot of interest is already generating about his upcoming June 2009 bout with Vitali Klitschko (36-2, 35 KOs) which will likely take place in a football stadium in London. However, as much as this fight might be interesting on the service level, I see it pretty much as likely route with Vitali taking it on himself to end matters quick against the 28-year-old Haye.
This would be a fight that would probably be much more entertaining if Haye had the chin and the experience against top level opposition in the heavyweight division to make the fight interesting for awhile. Unfortunately, Haye has neither the chin or much of any experience at the world class level in the heavyweight division. For those who point to Haye’s prior world titles won in the cruiserweight division as evidence to predict his success against Vitali, I think they’re badly misguided on this.
Frankly, what Haye has accomplished against smaller, much more limited fighters in the cruiserweight division doesn’t matter a hill of beans when it comes to taking on a fighter 6’8″ 250 lbs, a good 50 pounds and five inches taller than what Haye has typically faced while fighting as a cruiserweight.
If Haye had taken on a handful of heavyweight contenders leading up to his bout with Vitali, I’d give Haye a good chance, depending on how good he looked against the opponents. The problem here, though, is that we have only his one fight against Monte Barrett, a fighter, I admit, but clearly not in the class of Vitali or his little brother Wladimir.
What makes things especially bad is that Barrett gave Haye trouble, knocking him down in the 5th round with a good left hand. The knockdown was ruled a slip, but it seemed to many outside observers to be a legitimate knockdown, one that took Haye ages to get up from. That’s not a good sign for him given that he’s going up against a fighter that punches much harder than Barrett with every shot.
Most likely, Vitali will ruin the fun for boxing fans by destroying Haye in one or two rounds, and send everyone home shaking their heads, wondering why they wasted time believing the hype.
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