By Aaron Klein: It came to no surprise to me recently when heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (50-3, 44 KOs) stated in an interview that he wouldn’t be fighting David Haye any time soon, that he would have to “prove himself” before Wladimir would decide upon fighting him in the ring. It also didn’t surprise me to learn that Wladimir said that he would be teaching Haye “a lesson in the ring” when and if Haye ever reaches into to a fight with Wladimir. Obviously, it’s easy for Wladimir to talk now and make bold statements like this, with a fight with Haye light years into the future and something that may indeed never come off if Haye, or Wladimir are beaten.

It is disappointing, however, to see Wladimir telling Haye that he has to prove himself before he’ll fight him, because a fight with Haye would easily be the biggest payday of Wladimir’s long 12-year boxing career, with nothing come even close to it in comparison. For a fighter like Wladimir, whose entire career has been barren of any big-name fights like typical heavyweight champions of the past like Ali, Frazier, Lennox Lewis, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Larry Holmes. This is why it seems almost insane for him to be telling Haye to get lost when the fighters that Wladimir is seeking out – Tony Thompson, Alexander Povetkin, Ruslan Chagaev and Samuel Peter – are ones that the public don’t particularly care about.

To be sure, most Americans would probably not get too excited about Wladimir fighting Haye, but at least Europe would, and with a good marketing campaign by HBO, as well as a lot of advertising on the internet with boxing sites, a Haye vs. Klitschko fight would no doubt be a huge phenomena, much bigger than anything else Wladimir is cooking up in his brain. Instead of a fight with Haye, Wladimir has a pretty much hopeless dream of unifying the titles. Fat chance that’ll ever happen, for it would mean that Wladimir would have to hope that the WBA heavyweight champion (currently Ruslan Chagaev, or possibly John Ruiz or Nikolay Valuev) would be interested in a unification bout.

I don’t see why they would, because it would be a bout that none of them would have much of a chance to win, and therefore probably wouldn’t be interested in fighting in the first place. Besides that, Samuel Peter, the WBC heavyweight champion, is fighting Wladimir’s brother Vitali, and with his huge 6’8″ size and long reach, he’ll very likely give Peter a painful boxing lesson and take away his title in their October bout.

As most people already know, Wladimir and Vitali have always said they won’t ever fight each other due to an old promise that they made to their mother. That leaves Wladimir with absolutely no appealing options for opponents other than David Haye. By then, who knows? Maybe Haye will already be the top heavyweight attraction in the division. He certainly has the self confidence to make it to the top and has shown the ability, at least in the cruiserweight level to make it to the top.