By William Mackay: The fight between WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko and former WBA heavyweight champion David Haye appears to be still very much despite the news about Haye deciding not to renew his boxing license to continue his career.

Vitali’s manager Bernd Boente has been in direct contract with Adam Booth, Haye’s manager about a fight between Vitali and Haye for early next year.

In an interview at Sky Sport News, Boente said “Adam [Booth] and myself actually just spoke with each other and we are in constant contract. We are still waiting for some numbers from British TV and then we’ll see if the business case is realistic and then we’ll will do the fight or Vitali will fight another opponent in February or March next year.”

So it seems that Haye’s retirement talk may have been just a ploy to get Vitali in gear to make the fight happen. Haye had already said that he plans on retiring on his 31st birthday on Thursday. Of course, retirement, especially in boxing, is pretty much a meaningless thing because boxers often come out of retirement at the drop of the hat. Retirement is more of rest break for some boxers but not real in the traditional sense.

As for a rematch between Haye and Wladimir, that appears to be off the table unless Haye can somehow beat Vitali. Boente said “A rematch with Wladimir makes no sense because there are no questions after the first fight and you can only promote a fight if there is a certain thrill.”

A rematch between Haye and Wladimir will probably take a win for Haye or at least some significant wins over the likes of Tomasz Adamek, Alexander Povetkin, Robert Helenius, Denis Boytsov and Alexander Povetkin, fighters that Haye has been reluctant to take on. It’s doubtful that Haye will risk his neck against any of those guys, and thus a rematch for Haye with Wladimir will probably never happen.