Is Haye Too Small to Beat Wladimir?

By Dave Lahr: Although listed as 6’3” 215, David Haye (22-1, 21 KOs) looks positively tiny compared to the 6’7” 245 pound WBC/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (52-3, 46 KOs). The two will be fighting on June 20th, in the Veltins Arena, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. Haye has been loud in promoting the fight, enjoying angering Wladimir by wearing a t-shirt showing the decapitated heads of him and his brother Vitali Klitschko in each of Haye’s. The trash talking has helped sell tickets for the fight, but at a price of angering Wladimir and ruining any chances of hospitable relations with the Ukrainian title holder.

However, what seems to be lost in all the back and forth bickering between Haye and Wladimir is that Haye might not have the size needed to properly compete with Klitschko on June 20th. Indeed, Wladimir will very likely have a 30 pound weight advantage to go along with his four inch height and three inch reach advantage for this fight.

The reach advantage is perhaps even better than three inches, because Haye doesn’t typically jab much at all, and when he throws power shots, they’re usually looping punches thrown against fighters his own size or smaller. In facing Wladimir, who stands upright in a European style of fighting, Haye is going to need to get much closer in order to get his shots off.

There lies the problem for Haye, because in order for him to get near enough for him to land his power shots, since Haye doesn’t jab that often, he’s going to have to take a lot of hard jabs to the face on the way in. That wouldn’t be such a big deal except that Wladimir probably has the best jab in the heavyweight division.

His jab is similar to a power punch and he’s able to throw it over and over again without tiring. Before taking on trainer Emanuel Steward, Wladimir liked to use his powerful left hook nearly as much as his jab, and would often times neglect throwing his jab, even though it was such an important weapon for him.

Steward quickly changed that when he began to train Wladimir full time, and now has him throwing mostly jabs. This makes him a more effective fighter and one that is very hard to beat, because of the difficulty in getting close enough to hit him.

When his shorter opponents attempt to charge Wladimir to try and land, he fires off some big jabs that often stop them in their tracks. If the jabs don’t work, Klitschko sometimes fires off a short left hook when they get too close, and that punch is perhaps his hardest punch in his arsenal.

Wladimir can also move well laterally, and does this against fighters that like to come forward aggressively. Unlike a lot of heavyweights, Wladimir is athletic enough where he can throw his jab while on the move and throw it with power.

If his opponent is still able to get in close, then Wladimir grabs them in a tight clinch to prevent them from punching. With all this, Haye’s only reach chance to land due to his limited height and reach will be if he can somehow run forward and try a desperate shot at Wladmir.

I wouldn’t advise Haye to attempt his lunging hooks against Wladimir, because Haye will leave himself open to getting picked off by one of Wladimir’s left hooks on the way in. Haye telegraphs his shots badly and only gets away with them because of his hand speed.

However, his lack of size will be the biggest problem for Haye. In his fight with Monte Barrett, Haye looked to be even smaller than Barrett, a fighter that looked tiny in his fight with Wladimir. Barrett couldn’t land anything against Wladimir in his fight with him nine years ago in July 2000.

The same goes for the 6’3” Hasim Rahman, who also was too short to land anything against Wladimir. If you put Rahman against a normal heavyweight, he has no problems landing and can give most of them a lot of problems. However, he was much too small to give any problems to Wladimir.

This is going to be a problem that Haye is going to need to solve otherwise he will be humiliated by Wladimir and easily knocked out like other shorter fighters that have gone up against him.

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