By Matt Stein: World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (37-2, 36 KO’s) is out to make David Haye (22-1, 21 KO’s) pay for his insults of him and his younger brother Wladimir Klitschko when Vitali faces Haye on September 12th in Frankfurt, Germany.

Vitali, who sat idly by as Haye talked a lot of trash to Wladimir during the run up for their canceled June 20th bout that was supposed to have taken place at the Gelsenkirchen stadium in Germany, now finally has the opportunity to get his revenge and intends on shutting Haye up for good. “He’s insulted the Klitschko family and now he finally gets his punishment, Vitali said recently.

Haye, 28, took great sport in taunting Wladimir Klitschko, wearing a t-shirt depicting the severed heads of both brothers to a couple of press conferences and angering Wladimir a great deal by doing this. Haye seemed to go beyond the norm in promoting then fight and seemed to be taking relish in upsetting Wladimir. Haye’s theory on this was that he was trying to sell tickets, which he apparently did a bang up job in doing because the Gelsenkirchen stadium was completely sold out.

But Haye also wanted to upset Wladimir enough so that the Ukrainian fighter would want to slug it out with him instead of boxing from a distance like he normally does. Haye, only 6’3” 215, would have a difficult time in landing his big power shots if Wladimir chose not to slug it out with him because the 6’7” Wladimir had a huge reach advantage over Haye.

Now, Vitali is looking to make Haye eat his words on September 12th by knocking him out. Vitali turned 38 on July 19th, and there’s questions about whether he might suddenly start feeling his age soon. However, he looked hard to beat in chopping down his number #1 mandatory challenger 6’3” Juan Carlos Gomez on March 21st of this year, stopping him easily by a 9th round TKO and rarely getting hit by the Cuban Gomez in a mostly one-sided fight.

Although 6’3” like Haye, Gomez was just too small to land his shots and ended up getting hit with jabs every round until Vitali started opening up with power shots in the 8th round. In the 9th round, Vitali reared back and nailed Gomez with two big left hooks to finish him off.

Gomez, a fighter with excellent boxing skills, was unable to hit Vitali with any regularity because the Ukrainian controlled the distance with his jab and would lean or back away each time that Gomez would attack him. Haye may find himself facing similar problems against Vitali.

Haye isn’t particularly limber or good at closing distance, instead doing better when faced with an opponent that is there for him to land his big shots against. Haye hasn’t had to face taller opponents during his career and is usually bigger than the fighters he’s faced in the cruiserweight division.

As expected, Haye isn’t impressed with Klitschko’s record, pointing out that Vitali has faced a lot of older fighters that Haye feels are their just to get a good paycheck.