By Chris Williams: Heavyweight challenger David Haye is nothing short of his usual confident self as he approaches this Saturday night’s title bout against World Boxing Association heavyweight champion Nikolay Valuev in Nuremberg, Germany. Haye, 29, says “I’m going to embarrass him, knock him [Valuev] out. He’s never fought anyone as fast or who punches as hard as me, or as accurately. I know he feels I’m a little mouthy man from England, but he’s going to be in for a rude awakening when the bell goes.”

As you can see, the 6’3” Haye is not suffering from a shortage of confidence going into this fight. Confidence or at least the appearance of confidence, is something that Haye has never been lacking during his career. For good reason, he steam rolled over most of his competition as a cruiserweight, winning several titles in a short period of time. However, just as quickly did Haye win the cruiserweight titles, he just as quickly departed from the division without facing tougher threats like Tomasz Adamek, Marco Huck, Steve Cunningham, Ola Afolabi, BJ Flores and Guillermo Jones.

At the heavyweight level, Haye has fought Tomasz Bonin, Monte Barrett and came close to fighting both the Klitschko brothers. This Saturday night’s bout with the seven foot Valuev will be only the 3rd fight that Haye has had in the heavyweight division. This is why many people feel that Haye will fall on his face, get stopped and end up a major disgrace.

Haye hasn’t had any interest in working his way into a title shot like others, and instead has basically talked his way into the fights with the Klitschko brothers and now Haye. That’s either because Haye is afraid of what might happen if he were to have to face two or three top level fighters or he’s just badly in a rush to make big money and get a lot of acclaim in the process. However, by skipping over top contenders in the division to face Valuev, who is perceived to be the weakest of the three heavyweight champions by far, Haye might be setting himself up for failure.

Certainly, Haye has the youth, power and hand speed going for him against the tall Valuev, but he doesn’t have the chin, experience or the size. And that’s not good. While Haye has fought some decent fighters at the cruiserweight level, in every case they were flawed fighters. It’s hard to see one victory that Haye has picked up that would compare to what he’s facing this Saturday.

You can’t compare Enzo Maccarinelli or Jean Marc Mormeck, two of Haye’s best wins of his career, as being opponents that are comparable to Valuev. They might be good fighters but if you were to throw Maccarinelli and Mormeck in the ring with the 7-foot Valuev, I suspect that bad things would happen to Mormeck and Maccarinelli.

And Haye’s heavyweight experience, wins over Bonin and Barrett, are truly poor opponents to get him ready for a fight against Valuev. It seems as if Haye has short changed himself in his rush to get a title shot, and thinks that with all the things working against him in this fight that he’ll still be more than good enough to beat Valuev. It’s possible. But it’s also possible that Haye may find himself in way over his head and get quickly taken out when the punches start flying.