By Chris Williams: In looking at how David Haye has come across as supremely confident about being able to knockout a “boring” IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, I’m wondering what Haye’s behavior will be like if he’s beaten by Wladimir? I don’t know why but I get the sense that Haye is the type that will start offering up immediate excuses after the loss rather than kissing Klitschko’s backside like he should be doing after a loss.

Haye will probably contest the decision if it boils down to Wladimir winning by anything other than a knockout, saying that the decision was bogus and how things would be different if the fight were fought on neutral territory, meaning in England.

If Haye does give Wladimir any kind of credit for the victory it will likely be a backhanded compliment, something along the lines of “Klitschko’s height and reach was too much for me. If I were his size, I’d have destroyed him.”

That’s so sad when fighters like Haye resort to coming up with make belief excuses, as if the victory doesn’t count because of Wladimir’s size advantage. If that was the case, then why fight Klitschko at all? It’s like Haye will get credit whether he wins or loses to Wladimir, and won’t take the responsibility for having been beaten by a better fighter than him.

I suspect that Haye will pull his ace excuse out of his back pocket when he’s beaten, saying “I should have prepared better for Wladimir by fighting some other heavyweights before taking on the best heavyweight in the division.”

Gee, you think so? Haye’s lack of heavyweight experience no doubt will be an important factor in his June 20th fight with Wladimir, because Haye decided to fight only one heavyweight before facing Klitschko, and unfortunately for him the heavyweight was Monte Barrett, a fighter that I consider a 2nd level heavyweight. Haye will get what he put into this fight.

He prepared poorly by fighting no one and will get bad results because of this. Hopefully, Haye learns from his beating and focuses on trying to see if he’s good enough to beat good heavyweights before moving up to great ones like the Klitschko brothers.

I’d like to see Haye come back from this loss to fight heavyweights like Kevin Johnson, Chazz Witherspoon and Kali Meehan. You’ll noticed that I chose some flawed heavyweights, but in Haye’s case that’s what he needs right now to prepare himself to fight better fighters like Wladimir and Vitali.

Ideally, Haye needs to start from the bottom against the worst heavyweights that can be found and then move in a step by step progression upwards. However, due to his late start at heavyweight, Haye can no longer afford to go about learning how to be a good heavyweight the normal way.

I wouldn’t want to put Haye in with any quality fighters like Alexander Povetkin, Alexander Dimitrenko or Chris Arreola because Haye will very likely get knocked out again and that wouldn’t help him at all. So what we need to do is put training wheels on Haye and let him inch forward with baby steps so that he can learn the skills that he needs to compete against the best in the heavyweight division.