By Chris Williams: With Vitali Klitschko now out of the way, tied up with a mandatory defense of his WBC heavyweight crown against Juan Carlos Gomez, this leaves David Haye available to IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko to fight him in his next bout, which should be taking place sometime in the coming months. My hope is that Wladimir can fight Haye by as early as March 21st, the same time that Vitali defends against Gomez.
Short of a fight in March against Haye, then hopefully Wladimir can fight him in April and not have to wait much longer than that. Initially, Haye had been going after Wladimir but after Haye’s 5th round stoppage win over Monte Barrett in November, Vitali suddenly appeared to be the one that would be facing Haye next.
This didn’t sit right with Gomez, whom had defeated Vladimir Virchis in the WBC title Eliminator match in September earning him the fight to be the mandatory for the WBC title, because he didn’t want to step aside and take the chance that he might not get a chance at fighting Vitali. That was probably a wise move on Gomez’s part, because if Haye had somehow defeated Vitali, it probably would have meant a much smaller payday for Gomez.
Shortly before Vitali discovered that he’d be forced to fight Gomez – or else risk being stripped, Wladimir had been in the process of working on a bout against American heavyweight Chris Arreola. It was a semi-appealing bout to take while Wladimir waited for his number his IBF #1 mandatory challenger Alexander Povetkin to heal up after injuring himself in training.
However, a fight with Arreola in no way compares to a fight with Haye, who despite his lack of heavyweight experience, is an exciting fighter based on his previous titles won as a cruiserweight. Haye brings power, speed , a poor chin and the excitement that comes when you have no idea who will be knocked out.
Similar to Wladimir in his inability to take a hard shot without going down, Haye has been plagued by a bad chin for some time now, but has been lucky to have fought against weaker punchers in the cruiserweight division. The handful of power punchers that Haye has fought, he got to them before they had a chance to get to him.
That is what makes Haye so dangerous – his ability to end things with a single punch regardless of how poor he’s fighting at the time. In a fight with Wladimir Klitschko, the only think that you can honestly count on is that one of them will be knocked out inside the distance.
Naturally, being the bigger of the two in height and in weight and having fought as a heavyweight his entire career, most people see Wladimir as being the one that would come out on top in a fight against Haye. But you can’t really know, because Wladimir’s chin is just as weak as Haye’s, if not worse.
The main problem with Wladimir, however, is that he no longer fights aggressively enough to score early knockouts like he used to earlier in his career. That might be a problem against Haye, because if he lets Haye come forward and dictate terms, then I can see Haye setting up a trap and then flurrying on Wladimir and taking him out with a blur of punches. Like in a chess match, sometimes it not a good idea to play passively and let your opponent make the offensive moves.
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