Wladimir: “He’s [Haye] In For a Rough Ride”

By Boxing News - 01/31/2009 - Comments

wladimir44242By Jim Dower: IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (52-3, 46 KOs) still hasn’t forgotten the photo that former cruiserweight champion David Haye (22-1, 21 KOs) was showing to the media in which Haye was pictured holding the severed head of Wladimir. In a news conference this week, an unusually aggressive Wladimir had this to say about Haye: “Haye can say whatever he wants. I have the experience of knocking out guys who promised to turn my birthday into a funeral. His behavior is inappropriate. I will give my reply in the ring. He’s in for a rough ride.”

Wladimir, 32, will get his chance at paying Haye back on June 20th, as long as the negations are completed without any major hitches between the two fighters. Wladimir plans on fighting Haye at the Stamford Bridge Stadium in London, a move made to ensure that there’s a huge crowd present for the fight. However, there is also talk of the fight possibly taking place in Germany where both Klitschko brothers are quite popular, and often fight in front of huge audiences in Mannheim.

Up until recently, Haye had gone back and forth with both brothers, looking at one point to be in the process of facing Vitali Klitschko, Wladimir’s older brother. That fight was taken off the table because Vitali’s World Boxing Council (WBC) mandatory challenger Juan Carlos Gomez didn’t want to step aside and let Vitali fight Haye first.

Due to the brother’s goal of wanting to accumulate all of the heavyweight titles at the same time, Vitali chose not to vacate his WBC heavyweight title and instead opted to take the less desirable fight against Gomez, thus freeing up Wladimir to be the one to take on Haye.

As it turns out, this actually probably works much better for Wladimir, who was originally seen by many boxing fans as wimping out and letting his brother Vitali take the fight with Haye instead of him because he was afraid of being knocked out by the powerful Haye. Now, this argument has effectively been eliminated.

Haye, 28, gave up his WBA/WBC/WBO cruiserweight titles last year in order to move up to the heavyweight division. In his first fight since giving up his cruiserweight titles, he fought Monte Barrett and stopped him in an action packed 5th round TKO in November 2008. Haye chose not to take any other fights at heavyweight besides this one, immediately going after both Klitschko brothers.

Wladimir is coming off a 7th round stoppage of Hasim Rahman in December. Wladimir has held onto the IBF heavyweight crown since stopping Chris Byrd in the 7th round in April 2006. Wladimir added a second heavyweight title, the WBO belt, in a 12-round unanimous decision over Sultan Ibragimov in February 2008.

Most people naturally assume that Wladimir, considered to be the best heavyweight in the World, should be able to beat Haye without too many problems. It’s not that Haye isn’t a skilled fighter, but it’s his lack of experience at the heavyweight level combined with his history of a weak chin and marginal boxing ability.

Haye lives and dies by his ability to knock his opponents out and isn’t particularly skilled or nearly as versatile as Wladimir, who is capable of boxing or slugging. In the true sense of the word, Wladimir is a classic boxer/puncher and one of the best in all of boxing, whereas Haye is mostly just a slugger who gets by with his fast hand speed.



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