By Eric Thomas: Right about now I imagine that IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko wishes he had never agreed to fight David Haye. In the press conference today in London, Haye unleashed a storm of insults towards Wladimir and once again getting under the Ukrainian’s skin by questioning his manhood like in last week’s press conference in Germany. And again like last time, Haye got the better of Wladimir by insulting him throughout the meeting and saying things like, “he sucks; I don’t like what he represents.”
Haye is referring to Wladimir’s tendency to fight safety first in many of his title defenses against Hasim Rahman, Tony Thompson, Lamon Brewster and Calvin Brock.
Wladimir and Haye will be fighting on June 20th in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. The 70,000 seat stadium is already almost sold out with a reported 45,000 tickets already sold for the title bout. Whether Wladimir likes it or not, much of the credit for the tickets selling out so quickly has to go to David Haye, who with his loud trash talking in the media has helped make the fight much more popular than it normally would have been.
Without Haye taunting Wladimir, the bout would likely be much less successful due to Haye’s lack of experience at the heavyweight level.
Most American’s have seen him fight only once and that being a 5th round stoppage over journeyman Monte Barrett. That fight hardly counts as a meaningful fight and wasn’t nearly enough to make a name for Haye. Nor was Haye’s brief success at cruiserweight where he held the WBA/WBC/WBO titles in victories over Jean Marc Mormeck and Enzo Maccarinelli.
Haye only faced a limited amount of top fighters in the division and left before having to take on perhaps even better fighters like Ola Afolabi, Steve Cunningham and Tomasz Adamek. Afolabi recently knocked Maccarinelli out, which kind of made Haye’s win over him look less of a big deal than it was thought to be at the time.
Wladimir has tried to stay above the trash talk, and says that “it’s embarrassing to the sport.” However, the trash talk seems to have angered Wladimir enough to where he promised to torture Haye slowly, commenting: “After 12 rounds he will be a pizza face – then I will knock him out. He needs to be taught how to behave.”
Last week, Wladimir promised to knock Haye out in the 1st round, but now he’s promising to make it last a lot longer. More than likely that was what Wladimir was planning to do anyway, because he would be crazy if he went out and tried to take Haye’s head off in the 1st round.
Wladimir might succeed, but then he’s be risking the chance of getting knocked out himself. Back in Wladimir’s younger days before was trained by Emanuel Steward, Wladimir would likely try to knock Haye out in the first few rounds.
He was a lethal puncher back then, but under the training of Steward, Wladimir has evolved into much more defensive fighter who uses his jab and a lot of clinching to foil shorter heavyweights like Haye. This bout will present some issues for Haye should he not be able to land a big knockout punch.
Haye doesn’t have a good jab and because of his huge muscles, seems to lack the flexibility to extend his left arm out far enough to throw a good jab. This means that minus a knockout win by Haye, he’ll lose badly due to Wladimir’s much longer reach and better jab.
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