Is Haye Ready For The Klitschko Brothers?

By Boxing News - 12/24/2008 - Comments

haye5634665By Jim Dower: Far and away one of my most favorite fighters in boxing, heavyweight David Haye (22-1, 21 KOs) is about to step it up against the better class in the heavyweight division in 2009, and we’ll finally find out if he has the tools to succeed in the division. Having jumped ahead of many other more deserving fighters that have scraped and fought their way to the top of the heavyweight division, Haye is going to be given a shot against Vitali Klitschko or possibly Vitali’s brother Wladimir, if somehow the WBC prevents Vitali from sidestepping around his number #1 mandatory challenger Juan Carlos Gomez.

Haye, a smallish heavyweight at only 6’3″ 215, he has yet to prove that he can take a heavyweight punch. There had been hope that he would have fought a high quality heavyweight like he said he was going to before stepping it up to the big leagues against the Klitschko brothers, but instead he settled for Monte Barrett, and promptly took him out in five action packed rounds.

It would have been perhaps a little smarter if Haye had chosen a fighter with similar height, size and power characteristics as the Klitschkos, because the Barrett fight, a fighter roughly the same size as him, wasn’t something that would prepare him well for what he’s going to be dealing with against one of the giant Ukrainian fighters.

Likewise, Haye needed to show that he could fight beyond the 6th round, because he’s had a history of having stamina issues once a fight progresses beyond that period, making his susceptible to getting hurt. And though Wladimir has his own problems with tiring out in the late rounds, plus his similarly weak chin, at least in his case he has a lot more size which lets him get away with fading late in the fight.

If he gets tired, all he has to do is clinch or jab continuously, and his problem goes away on its own after a round or two. With Haye, a small heavyweight, he’s not tall enough, doesn’t have long enough arms and isn’t limber enough to fight on the outside and rest in the same manner.

With him, he’s forced to fight through it when he’s tired, and hope that he can get to his opponent with some big shots before he gets to him. Thus far, he’s been fortunate, having faced for the most part, light light-hitting cruiserweights his entire career.

Though he has been in with several hard hitters during that time, he was able to use his power to win two out of three of the fights. My immediate concern, however, is that he’s done it against fighters that would probably be destroyed by both Klitschko brothers in a round or two without suffering a scratch in the process.

Aside from these three fights, Haye has fought essentially weak competition his entire career and no one nearly as good as what he’ll be facing when he steps it up against the Klitschkos. In the final analysis, Haye is like a student who has been struggling through remedial match, and is now being served up a calculus test.

He may have good intentions, and do a good job putting his name and date on the top of the test, but beyond that, he’ll very likely be clueless and way over his head. That’s too bad, because what he really needed to do is start from the bottom, fighting his way to the top like other fighters instead of getting over ambitious and going for the gold already.



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