By Chris Williams: Count me in as one of those people who are praying that British heavyweight David Haye (22-1, 21 KO’s) gets knocked out by WBA heavyweight champion Nikolay Valuev (50-1, 34 KO’s) on November 7th, in Germany. I didn’t feel this way when Haye first started calling out IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko a year ago.
I thought that Haye was going to be a breath of fresh air for a division badly in need of an exciting fighter to liven it up. There hasn’t been anyone to counterbalance the effect of having to Klitschko brothers dominate the division with an iron fist.
The novelty was interesting at first to have two brothers as champion, but I realized soon enough that it’s boring because neither of them have much of a personality and they fight such god awful boring fights most of them. Haye was supposed to remedy that by bringing his exciting fighting style from the cruiserweight division, where Haye held down three of the four titles at the time he moved up in weight, and dominate like he did before as a cruiserweight.
I thought it would work that way, but instantly I started seeing things that I didn’t like about Haye, specifically all the talk without action. Haye started off immediately saying he was going to fight someone really good, because he didn’t want to take an easy fighter.
Haye then turns around and fights Monte Barrett. That’s not exactly what many of us were thinking when Haye started his bragging. I was willing to give Haye a free pass on that opponent. Had Haye never said a word about him fighting a quality heavyweight, few people would have ragged on him if he had chose Barrett.
But the way that Haye was talking, you’d think that he was going to fight Alexander Povetkin or Eddie Chambers. So it was kind of a shocking disappointment to see Haye pull out Barrett’s name out of the hat as his opponent. Haye did his job in the fight for the most part, knocking Barrett down multiple times and getting a 5th round TKO win.
I didn’t care for the way that Haye was knocked down in the 5th round by a weak left from Barrett, and then Haye was hit with another left while on the canvas. The referee ruled it a slip, but Haye was actually hurt by the two weak punches and needed to stay down for a long time.
I knew Haye had a problem with his chin as a cruiserweight, but I didn’t know it was this bad. Suddenly, I wasn’t nearly as interested in seeing Haye fight in the future against Wladimir Klitschko. That fight had 1st round knockout written all over it, no matter how I looked at the fight.
After the Barrett fight, Haye went out of his way to talk his way into a title fight with Wladimir. But then Haye blows it by saying he injured his back. So that fight was gone. Then Haye backs out of a fight with Vitali Klitschko, saying he’ll be fighting Valuev instead. It looked to me that Haye didn’t want to take on a dangerous opponent and was instead looking for an easy title.
Now, I’m really hoping that Valuev destroys Haye and sends him back from where he came from. I can’t stand Valuev either, but the alternative to him seems far worse. For some reason, I think Haye would be a terrible champion.
If he says one thing, I’ll be expecting the opposite from him. And even if he did talk the Klitschko brothers into fighting him, I would have my doubts whether Haye would even make it to the fight without walking out for some reason or another.
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