By Scott Gilfoid: David Haye still doesn’t understand why Tyson Fury (25-0, 18 KOs) made the calculated mistake of signing a rematch clause for a fight against former IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (64-4, 53 KOs), when he was the mandatory challenge for their recent fight on November 28th at the ESPRIT Arena in Dusseldorf, Germany.
By signing the rematch clause, it means that Fury must face Klitschko a second time, and likely back in Germany rather than in the UK like Fury and his trainer Peter Fury are hoping for.
Haye, 35, is still hoping to get a fight against Fury in the near future despite him saying he’ll never face him after he pulled out of two fights against him in the past. Fury said he’d rather fight his cousin Hughie Fury than fight Haye and give him a payday.
“I don’t understand why Tyson signed for a rematch when it was a mandatory contest – it’s weird,” Haye said to theguardian.co.uk. “Why would you do that? Fury is going to have to go back to Germany. They keep talking about Wembley but there is no way Klitschko is ever going to fight in England. He fights with all his regulatory people in Germany. Tyson should win it again but they are going to make it as awkward as possible for him.”
I believe that Fury signed the rematch clause with Klitschko because he understood that it would give him his best opportunity for a nice payday. Fury wisely realized that he would make big money against Klitschko the second time around in a rematch, because his purse split would be bigger. It would be the best option for Fury rather than him risking his hide fighting talents like Deontay Wilder and getting potentially knocked out by him. Fury obviously saw the 39-year-old Wladimir’s previous fight against Bryant Jennings and noticed that he was starting to resemble a shot fighter.
Fury has already proven that he can beat Klitschko in Germany, so there shouldn’t be any reason why he can’t win again over there as long as he fights at a high level. In the rematch, Fury will very likely need to up his game to another level because Klitschko will surely be looking to be a little more offensive than he was last time. Haye thinks that Wladimir wasn’t comfortable with the huge height and reach of Fury, and he didn’t want to get nailed by him at all in the fight.
“Klitschko went to the well and it was dry,” Haye said. “He had nothing left. After the first round I thought that’s it – Klitschko can’t throw any punches. Klitschko doesn’t like losing the reach and weight advantage. He blows a fuse. He needs to have the physical advantage because he’s petrified of being hit. I’ve never seen a heavyweight champion throw so few punches.”
Klitschko definitely does not like getting hit at all in his fights, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t be able to make the needed adjustments in his game to potentially score a knockout or win a decision in the rematch over Fury. You have to remember that Fury was almost as awful as Klitschko was, and he’s in the prime of his career unlike Wladimir. If this was all Fury could do against Wladimir, then I think there’s a better chance that Wladimir will be able to make the needed changes to his game to get the victory the next time around.
I do think Wladimir is pretty much a shot fighter at this point in his career, but I don’t think it really matters though because he’s facing such a poor heavyweight in Fury. Wladimir doesn’t need to be in his prime to defeat a mediocre heavyweight like the 27-year-old Fury.
The only thing that Wladimir needs to do is to make sure that he fights with more aggressiveness than he did the last time around. Wladimir needs to be willing to take some of Fury’s periodic slaps in order to get the victory, because he’s definitely not going to win the fight if he continues to fight like he did last time.
It’ll be really bad luck for Haye if Wladimir wins the rematch against Fury, because there’s no way that Wladimir is going to bother fighting Haye again unless he becomes his No.1 mandatory challenger, and that obviously isn’t going to happen anytime soon due to Haye’s long absence from the ring.
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