By Dan Ambrose: 46-year-old World Boxing Council (WBC) light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins isn’t impressed with IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (55-3, 49 KO’s) and is predicting an easy knockout win for WBA heavyweight champion David Haye (25-1, 23 KO’s) today in Hamburg, Germany. Not only does Hopkins think that Haye will beat Wladimir, but he also sees Haye beating Vitali Klitschko – with ease.

Hopkins said this to the BBC Sport about Wladimir: “Haye will knockout both [Klitschko] brothers. I’m not impressed with those guys…They’re very ordinary. They ain’t special; they’re just lucky. Wladimir will be real easy for Haye, but he’d run them both out.”

It’s kind of hard to take Hopkins’ comments about either of the Klitschkos seriously. If he really believes that Haye will beat both brothers easily then Hopkins hasn’t been watching enough of Haye’s fights and taking note of who he’s been facing to get his impressive wins against. I can see Haye possibly getting an early knockout win over Wladimir if Haye attacks him all out in the early rounds, but that’s still a really iffy thing and would be going against the grain of how Haye’s been fighting at heavyweight.

But for Hopkins to also say that Haye would easily destroy Vitali as well just tells me that Hopkins doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to the heavyweight division. He may know the light heavyweight division well, but I don’t agree with his views on Haye being the end all at heavyweight.
Hopkins says “Without Haye, there ain’t nothing going on in the heavyweight division.”

Hoplkins is right about that, but the boxing public don’t like fighters that are based on hype. Haye will likely go from being the happening guy in the heavyweight division to that of just another exposed cherry picker if Wladimir destroys him. And it won’t matter how much talk Haye does after this fight, if he gets knocked out the boxing public won’t buy his bragging and promises of knockouts in the future unless he’s facing a scrub opponent.