By Jim Slattengren: Being unusually gifted for gab, David Haye (22-1, 21 KOs) has done quite a job of promoting his June 20th bout with IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (52-3, 46 KOs). In fact, Haye, 28, may have done too good of a job as he’s awoken a sleeping giant in Wladimir and angered the Ukrainian like no other fighter has done before. Haye seems to consider himself as just doing his job by hurling insults at Wladimir to try and promote the fight.
However, by doing so, Haye has taken things a bit too far and has dealt from the bottom of the deck by sporting a t-shirt depicting the severed heads of not just Wladimir, but his brother Vitali Klitschko. Perhaps if it was only a photo of Wladimir, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference in the big scheme of things.
But, by Haye wearing a t-shirt with Vitali’s cut off head in it, and promising to knock him out as well, it’s infuriated Wladimir like nothing else before. Haye believes that this will ultimately help his situation, because an angered Wladimir won’t be thinking clearly and will rush straight in and try to mix it up with Haye in the same way that Enzo Maccarinelli attempted to do last year.
The result, Haye hopes, is that he can catch Wladimir with a big shot and take him out. The opposite may end up happening, though, because if Wladimir fights like he used to earlier in his career when he was a dangerous knockout artist, Haye may find himself getting blasted out in the first or second round by an angry Wladimir.
Wladimir is promising to turn Haye into a “pizza face” on June 20th, which translates into Wladimir jabbing Haye’s face until it busts up and bleeds all over. I’m not so certain that’s what Wladimir is going to do after today’s press conference in New York , in which Haye called Wladimir a “B level” heavyweight. Wladimir seems to mean business now and doesn’t want just to get a slow victory.
He’s probably going to be throwing too hard to win by slow measure, wanting to take Haye’s head off with every punch for his insults of him and his brother. At the same time, Wladimir has to realize that if he lets Haye stick around for too long, he’s going to increase the chance that Haye will be able to catch him with one of his big shots and take him out.
If Wladimir doesn’t see the possibility of Haye scoring a knockout, Wladimir’s trainer Emanuel Steward obviously does. He’s not going to want to let Haye stay in the fight if Wladimir has a chance to take him out and avoid problems.
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