Ruiz may Block the Haye-Valuev Bout from Happening

By Boxing News - 07/24/2009 - Comments

By Jim Dower: David Haye may have moved too soon by dashing on a fight with World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko for a title shot against the huge WBA heavyweight champion Nikolay Valuev set for November 7th. Former two-time WBC heavyweight champion John Ruiz, the mandatory challenger for Valuev’s title, isn’t going to let Valuev bypass him for his title and is taking the issue up with the WBA.

Ruiz correctly points out that Haye isn’t ranked in the World Boxing Association, and that the Haye vs. Valuev fight hasn’t been sanctioned by the WBA. Apparently, it will take a special permit for the bout to be sanctioned by the WBA. Valuev and his team may have forgot, but the deadline for his yearly mandatory defense is due next month on August 30th, which gives Valuev very little time to squeeze in a bout with Ruiz before then. This is something that Valuev and his team will have to take care of immediately. Perhaps Ruiz might be open to a step aside fee, who knows?

Also, it seems that Valuev, 35, has already had an interim title fight against Evander Holyfield last year in December. After that, Valuev was allowed to fight Ruslan Chagaev, the WBA champion in recess, so that the two could determine who the real champion was.

The Chagaev fight would have counted as Valuev’s yearly mandatory fight, strangely enough, but since it didn’t happen because Chagaev failed the pre-fight medical exam, it meant that Valuev still had a commitment to his mandatory challenger, in this case Ruiz.

If Ruiz isn’t given his mandatory shot at Valuev’s title or unless there can be an arrangement that Ruiz is happy with, the WBA could be looking at legal action by Ruiz and his team.

In the worse case scenario, Haye would have to wait for Valuev to defend his title against Ruiz another time before getting his own chance against the winner. Based on Valuev’s two previous victories over Ruiz, it’s likely that he’ll beat Ruiz again.

However, the time that it would take for the fight between Valuev and Ruiz to take place would mean that Haye would have to sit idle likely until late this year, possibly around November or December unless Haye decided to fight someone else before that.

That would mean that Haye would have been out of the ring for a year. That’s not a good thing obviously. Haye doesn’t seem to be too interested in tune-up bouts since moving up to the heavyweight division for some reason, so I doubt that he’d want to stay busy while Valuev and Ruiz fight it out.

Likewise, there is probably zero possibility that Haye can turn around and try to resume fight negotiations with WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko, because Haye has probably burned that bridge with his pulling out of the fight suddenly without any warning yesterday.

This is the second that Haye has walked out on the Klitschko brothers, and it’s doubtful that they’ll ever trust him enough to try and line up a third fight with him. That’s unfortunate, because if Haye does end up winning a title in the WBA, he won’t have much in the way of competition there because of the mostly mediocre fighters in the WBA.



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