By Aykan Tahir: In 2008 David Haye stated live on Setanta Sports that he would retire from the ring on his 31st Birthday. This gives him just a shade over 2 years to win and unify the heavyweight belts, not an impossible task but has Haye already burnt the bridges that would have allowed him access to these belts? If he does manage to unify all of the belts then he can fall back on his “retire at 31” statement without the need to defend the belts and potentially lose them to fighters who are not near retirement age and past their best.

So on current form if Haye fights both the Klitschko brothers (and wins) he will have only to defend his titles once. This seems to be the easiest way for Haye to be remembered as an undefeated heavyweight champion and I think Haye has given this a lot of thought to be the case.

Some pundits would say that Haye has no chance of fighting either of the Klitschko brothers after his verbal assault on both of them, however, I would suggest that this has created such an atmosphere around the trio that a fight is inevitable. It makes monetary sense for either of the brothers to fight Haye because it is the fight that the boxing fans want to see and there is no doubt that it could be one of the biggest grossing boxing events of the last 5 years. Perhaps more importantly it will drum up some interest in the boxing world once again.

This is all, of course, circumstantial and reliant upon David Haye defeating the 7ft tall WBA champion Nikolai Valuev on November 7th in Germany. This is no easy task as the Russian, Valuev, has never been knocked down and Haye has stated that he would be the first to do so. Moreover Haye is, almost offensively, untried in the heavyweight division so whether or not he can step up and handle the true heavyweights is yet unknown. Against Valuev, though, it seems Hayes best chance of victory will come by way of TKO.

Whether Haye wins or Valuev wins it seems like the Klitschko’s will have no choice but to unify the belts within the following 12 months because if they do not then they will risk interest in this division falling to an all time low and the financial rewards will not be as high as they would be. Arguably the Klitschko brothers have already ruined the heavyweight division by refusing to fight each other so it will be up to the Brit or Russian to take the fights to them and once again prove heavyweight fighting is exciting once again.