Warren Sees Wladimir Beating Haye – News

By Chris Williams: Promoter Frank Warren believes that IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (52-3, 46 KOs) will beat David Haye (22-1, 21 KOs) in their title match on June 20th, at the Veltins Arena, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, according to Setanta Sports. Warren feels that the 33-year-old 6’6” 245 pound Klitschko will “too big” for Haye and “too much of a boxer.”

Warren does feel that Wladimir is equally vulnerable in getting knocked out if he gets hit with one of Haye’s big shots in the fight. However, Warren points out Haye’s history of being susceptible to hard shots, bringing up Haye’s knockdowns by Jean Marc Mormeck, Carl Thompson and Monte Barrett.

The mention of Barrett is an interesting one, as many boxing fans, especially those from Britain, feel that Haye’s knockdown in the 5th round from a big left hook from Barrett was the result of a slip. However, many American fans see it as an authentic knockdown and feel that Barrett should have been given the win by a knockout when it took ages for Haye go get up after being dropped.

Having seen the fight many times myself at regular speed and in slow motion, the knockdown of Barrett seemed legitimate and the English referee appeared to blow the call when he ruled it a slip instead of a knockdown.

The mistake Barrett made was that after he dropped Haye, he added another left hook to the head while Haye was down. The second left hook wasn’t hard, though, and it seems that Haye was hurt by the first left that dropped him. After being knocked down, Haye would stand up briefly before having to take a knee on the canvas and clear his head.

Warren feels that Wladimir is too big of a fighter for Haye, who only recently moved up to heavyweight from the cruiserweight division in November 2008, selecting a journeyman heavyweight to fight in his first bout (the second time that Haye had fought at heavyweight in his career) rather than a top fighter.

Warren thinks that Haye keeps his hands to low when he fights, and feels that Klitschko will make Haye pay for his bad habit of not holding his guard up. Indeed, this is what many knowledgeable boxing experts have been saying about Haye for quite some time since he fought Barrett.

Haye has adopted some bad habits from his days as a cruiserweight where he was often the bigger fighter than his opponents and hasn’t changed them now that he’s fighting against bigger fighters in the heavyweight division.

Haye was able to get away with keeping his hands low in his fight with Barrett because Monte isn’t really a big puncher, but as you can see, it appears that Barrett hits hard enough to have caused Haye some problems. Moving up from Barrett to Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko is like moving to another division altogether.

You might as well call it the super heavyweight division because that’s what Wladimir and Vitali, super heavyweights. Haye has okay size at 6’3”, 215 lbs, but he’s not even close to being the size of the Klitschko brothers and other big heavyweights like Alexander Dimitrenko.

Powerful punchers like Mike Tyson may have proven to a certain extent that smaller fighters can compete at times with talented super heavyweights, but for the most part the larger heavyweight usually prevails. The 6’5” Lennox Lewis made it look easy in dominating Tyson at the end of his career, and perhaps he would have done the same even in Tyson’s youth. Haye doesn’t have Tyson’s power, head movement or ability to absorb a hard punch, so Haye has a formidable task ahead of him for June 20th.

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