Haye Looking To Fight Klitschko After Two More Fights

By Boxing News - 06/10/2008 - Comments

haye5555.jpgBy Aaron Klein: Cruiserweight champion David Haye (21-0, 20 KOs) stated recently that he plans on fighting two top ranked fighters at heavyweight, and after destroying them, he’ll be ready to challenge IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (50-3, 44 KOs) for his world titles. Klitschko has said that he wouldn’t fight Haye, 27, unless he was “ranked high enough” for it to possible, meaning probably that Klitschko won’t fight Haye unless he absolutely has to by him being his mandatory challenger. This is exactly what Haye is looking to do by beating a couple of top fighters in the heavyweight division, moving up to the top and forcing Wladimir to fight him whether he wants to or not.

Other than that, Klitschko will likely never fight Haye unless it’s actually forced upon him with the threat of him being stripped of his heavyweight titles. That’s the trap for Wladimir. Unlike other champions, he’s not going to vacate his titles in order to sidestep around an opponent, because of his dream – hopeless as it may seem – to unify all of the heavyweight titles. Obviously, Wladimir would prefer it to be easy and quick, him beating his next challenger for his WBO heavyweight title Tony Thompson, whom he fights on July 12th, then Sultan Ibragimov, his long awaited #1 IBF contender to his title, and then hopefully arrange bouts against the winner of Ruslan Chagaev and Nikolay Valuev. Then, if Wladimir is still a champion by that time, he could possibly fight Samuel Peter, the WBC heavyweight champion, in the final missing piece of his title unification dream.

Unfortunately for Wladimir, he would have to continue to defend his titles as he moves forward towards his additional unification bouts, which is where Haye will likely get his opportunity for a bout with Wladimir. It’s regrettable that Haye isn’t just given a shot at Wladimir’s titles, since a bout with Haye would seem like the most logical choice out of the entire bunch. Most boxing fans could care less about whether Wladimir fights the likes of Chagaev, Valuev and Peter, though there is a little interest in a Peter fight, I admit that.

Peter, however, might not be a champion by then, as he has an October match-up with Wladimir’s brother, Vitali Klitschko, who if he has anything left in the tank, he may very well give Peter a tremendous beating in the process of taking away his titles. This in effect stops Wladimir from achieving his goal of unifying the titles, and further makes it clear that he would have been better off to take on Haye rather than try to tip-toe around him for easier, less exciting bouts against fighters like the aforementioned Chagaev, Valuev and Peter.

As for Haye, it’s going to take wins over very high top 10 opponents for him to get close enough to become the number #1 challenger for Wladimir’s titles. That brings another problem for Haye, namely that there will likely be few top ten fighters that will want to risk their high ranking against a fighter as powerful and dangerous and Haye. One name that Haye has his eyes on is former heavyweight champion Hasim Rahman. However, so far Rahman has failed to agree to a bout with Haye. Rahman also has another problem preventing a fight at this time, as he’s scheduled to fight James Toney on July 16th. However, if things go good for him, Rahman possibly might be interested in a risky fight against Haye.



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