Will Haye avoid the Klitschko brothers?

By Boxing News - 11/21/2009 - Comments

By Chris Williams: After David Haye captured the World Boxing Association heavyweight title with a narrow win over Nikolay Valuev on November 7th, Haye made mention of wanting to fight one of the Klitschko brothers, saying he didn’t care which one it was as long as he was fighting one of the Klitschko brothers in a unification bout.

As of now, Haye will be defending his WBA title against mandatory challenger John Ruiz in early 2010. After that, however, it’s anyone’s guess. There has been mention of Tomasz Adamek being interested in a fight with Haye, and it will be intriguing to see if Haye goes for a less risky fight against him rather than the Klitschko brothers.

Additionally, Haye has to fight a rematch with the 36-year-old Valuev, as he had a rematch clause in his contract. The way things look now, Haye may not get around to fighting the Klitschko brothers at all in the near future, if at all.

So will Haye choose to mile his WBA title and try to string it out as long as he possibly can by defending it against more beatable heavyweights rather than taking a big gamble and shooting for a fight against one of the Klitschko brothers? It’s hard to blame Haye if he did avoid the Klitschko brothers, because he doesn’t match up well with either of them. No doubt Haye has a lot of power, fast hands and an ability to end a fight with a single punch.

But Haye doesn’t have the reach or the jab needed to land shots if the Klitschko brothers decide to play it safe and jab him into submission from the outside. More than that, Haye doesn’t appear to have the work rate needed to beat the Klitschko brothers.

I’ve heard it mentioned by a number of writers and I took a look at several of Haye’s last fights and it’s pretty clear that Haye doesn’t throw a lot of punches compared to other top flight heavyweights, in particular the Klitschko brothers. If Haye were to fight them, Haye wouldn’t be able to win if he’s getting out-punched approximately eight to one.

Haye’s punches may be hard, but the Klitschko brothers punch every bit as hard as Haye, only with a better work rate. This is why I can imagine that Haye might decide to play it safe and defend his WBA title against the likes of Ruiz, Valuev, Adamek and possibly Bernard Hopkins before he even considers facing one of the Klitschko brothers.

I do think Haye will fight one of them, but only after Haye has exhausted all the winnable decent money fights he can before he faces a risky fight against one of them. Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer has talked about a Klitschko-Haye bout being a huge money maker and I would agree with that. However, it’s not going to be the big money maker that Schaefer thinks it will be until Haye gets some more fights under his belt as a heavyweight and has more visibility in the United States.



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