Photo Pavel Eagle eye Terekhov – By William Mackay: Well, it’s coming straight from the horse’s mouth, specifically former cruiserweight champion David Haye (22-1, 21 KOs) who says that his match-up with IBF/WBC heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (52-3, 46 KOs) will be signed by next week for the June 20th fight which will be taking place in Germany.
According to Haye, everything that has been settled and ready to go ahead after the signing. As usual, Haye was his cocky self, predicting on Steve Bunces’ Boxing Hour show that Haye would be knocking Wladimir Klitschko by the 6th round.
It’s pretty bold talk for a fighter that essentially talked his way into a heavyweight title fighter rather than fighting his way into a title match. You would think that will his size disadvantage against Wladimir, Haye would want to focus on less talking and instead be working on developing his boxing skills for the fight.
Up to this point, Haye has fought only twice in his career as a heavyweight, beating Tomasz Bonin and Monte Barrett by TKO. It would have been a little more interesting if Haye had at least proved himself against several other top heavyweights to show that he was at least worthy of a title fight instead of going after Bonin and Barrett, neither a top level fighter in my view.
The fact that Haye was stunned briefly by Barrett, a weak puncher, in the 5th round seems to suggest that Haye wasn’t too interested in having to work his way to the top against some of the tough heavyweights in the top tier.
Even though Haye has fought essentially no one in the heavyweight division, boxing fans could careless and just want to see a good fight. Klitschko has had little competition since winning the IBF title in 2006, knocking out five of the six opponents he’s faced during that time and easily beating the sixth (Sultan Ibragimov) by a one-sided decision.
Haye is well aware of the lack of worthwhile competition out there for Wladimir, saying “There’s no other fight out there for him that people are remotely interested in.” He’s dead right with his opinion about that, because other than Chris Arreola, there’s no real challengers out there that will bring in the kind of money that Wladimir would make against Haye.
“This is going to be one of my easiest fights,” Haye says about Klitschko. Obviously, Haye is being a little untruthful, because he struggled with taking big punches from small 200 pound cruiserweights, and will be facing a huge step up in facing Wladimir Klitschko, who weighs 245.
Haye has always been cocky and this isn’t news to anyone. However, if he truly believes that this will be one of his easiest fights it will play into Wladimir’s hands perfectly and we could see an easy night for the big Ukrainian.
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