Haye quick with an excuse for losing to Wladimir, blaming it on his toe

By Boxing News - 07/02/2011 - Comments

Image: Haye quick with an excuse for losing to Wladimir, blaming it on his toeBy Dan Ambrose: You knew that former WBA heavyweight champion David Haye (25-2, 23 Ko’s) would cook up some kind of excuse if he were to lose Saturday’s fight with IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (56-3, 49 Ko’s), you just never knew it was going to be that Haye had a broken toe, at least that’s what he said after getting totally dominated by Wladimir in a 12 round unanimous decision loss for Haye.

The scores were 118-108, 117-109 and 116-110. But they only tell part of the story. The real story here is that Haye fought like a guy that was afraid to get hit and wasn’t willing to take the risks needed to try and get through Wladimir’s powerful jab to try and win it. We knew that Haye only a puncher’s chance to win the fight, but with all the trash talking that Haye had done before the fight we expected him to come out slugging instead of running and avoiding action. Haye only landed 74 punches in the fight compared to Wladimir’s 134. Most of Haye’s shots were one at a time desperate hayemaker shots that often missed by a mile. When Haye did land his right hands, they had no effect on Wladimir whatsoever. Haye was knocked down in the 11th round. It really wasn’t a knockdown but rather Haye falling down and the referrer ruling it a knockout, perhaps because he was tiring of Haye falling down on his own. It looked like Haye was just trying to buy time and waste the round during these occasions.

Haye said before the fight that he wasn’t going to allow Wladimir to land his jab, and in part Haye did do a good job of getting out of the way of a lot of Wladimir’s shots. However, Haye was still a lot by enough jabs for him to lose almost every round, and the movement by Haye to get out of the way of Wladimir’s jabs only made it easier for him to win rounds. With Haye focusing on not getting hit, he gave the fight to Wladimir.

Haye finally seemed to show a little offensive life in the 9th round when he tagged Wladimir with a good right hand, but like usual, it was just one shot and not thrown with any additional punches. Wladimir kind of exposed Haye in this fight as a pot shot fighter, a limited guy who can only throw pot shots but not combinations.

Wladimir totally dominated Haye in the 10th, out-punching him by a 16-1 margin in an embarrassing round for Haye. It looked then like Wladimir was going to take Haye out sooner or later. However, Wladimir wasn’t able to hurt Haye in the 11th or the 12th. Haye was down in the 11th and given a brief count by the referee after slipping. It wasn’t knockdown but I think referee had seen enough from Haye with his flopping around and ruled it as a knockdown anyway. Haye did land a nice right hand in the 12th but wasn’t able to add anything with it.



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