Boxing News – Haye eager for Vitali bout

By Chris Williams: In a sign that British heavyweight David Haye urgently wants a fight with Vitali Klitschko, Haye is reportedly willing to travel to Germany to fight the older Klitschko brother if need be. That’s pretty much a given, though, because Vitali isn’t about to take the fight if it’s going to be in the UK where Haye, 28, has a lot of fans.

Although Vitali probably would take it if Haye could guarantee that they would sell out one of their large football stadiums. Haye may be popular with his British boxing fans, but he’s perhaps not that popular of a fighter that he could pull something like this off.

Ricky Hatton, on the other hand, has more than enough fans to sell out a big stadium, but not Haye at this point. Haye is reportedly in negotiations with Vitali, the World Boxing Council heavyweight champion, for a bout in September. Haye was thought to be dead in the water after pulling out of his June 20th bout against IBF/WBO heavyweight champion with a back ailment.

There was speculation by some people that Haye had pulled out due to money issues. Whatever the case, Wladimir was unwilling to wait on Haye’s back to get better and decided to move on and defend his titles against Ruslan Chagaev instead on June 20th.

Wladimir went one step further, however, by telling Haye afterwards that he would have to get in line with the other top contenders and work his way into a title fight with him. This isn’t what Haye had wanted to hear, because it would have meant a lot of hard work on his part with no guarantee that he’d be able to get through the tough fighters that he’d be forced to fight.

It won’t matter though if Vitali decides to fight him and free Haye from having to take some unpleasant risks. However, if Haye’s back really is hurt, he’s going to have to make sure that he rehabilitates the injury sufficiently, because if he gets injured again and forces another cancellation of a fight, I can’t see Vitali having the patience to wait on Haye’s injury to heal up.

Vitali will be turning 38 on July 19th, and he can’t be wasting time on a fighter whose back isn’t up to snuff. This is why Haye needs to ensure that he takes it easy for awhile and avoids whatever caused the injury in the first place.

If shadow boxing is too strenuous for Haye’s delicate back then he needs to stay away from this activity until after his fight with Vitali. The chances of Haye winning the fight against Vitali are very slim, so he needed wear himself out on needless exercises when the outcome will probably be just the same with Vitali destroying Haye and sending him packing for the cruiserweight division.

Vitali still has other options available to him like Chris Arreola, so if Haye doesn’t work out because of injury or problems with the negotiation process, Vitali won’t be losing much. Haye hasn’t helped himself since moving up to heavyweight division because of his reluctance to face high quality opposition.

Technically, Monte Barrett was a top tier fighter at the time that Haye fought him, but that’s far from what people had in mind when Haye said he was going to fight a top fighter when he moved up to the heavyweight division last year. If Haye had fought and beaten someone in the caliber of Arreola, Eddie Chambers, Alexander Povetkin, Alexander Dimitrenko or Odlanier Solis, then Haye would be a much bigger sale for the Klitschko fight in September.

However, as of now, Haye is still relatively unknown and is getting by with his mouth and his past exploits against smaller 200 pound cruiserweights rather than the 250 pound giants that he wants to fight.

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