By William Mackay: World Boxing Association heavyweight champion David Haye (23-1, 21 KO’s) sounded mixed up in an interview with the Belfast Telegraph, saying this about the Klitschko brothers: “The Klitschkos both hate me and it’s not just the t-shirt [Haye is referring to the t-shirt depicting him carrying the severed heads of the Klitschko brothers that he wore to a press conference with Wladimir Klitschko]. It worked. Three hours later, 25,000 tickets had sold for the June fight.” Haye is talking about his June 20th scheduled fight with Wladimir Klitschko. Haye ended up injuring his back and was unable to make the fight with Wladimir.

Haye seems to enjoy being disliked by the Klitschko brothers for some reason, as if it will give him an edge in the ring when he eventually fights them – if he ever does. I don’t know that the Klitschko brothers dislike Haye. I think they mostly don’t respect him. However, Haye’s constant needling for the Klitschko brothers isn’t that big of a deal. Haye hasn’t backed up his talk in the ring with either of the brothers. Haye had a chance to fight both, but ended up backing out because of an injury for the Wladimir bout. And in the case of Vitali, Haye disappeared during negotiations and chose instead to fight WBA heavyweight champion Nikolay Valuev. This gave many boxing fans the impression that Haye is scared of the Klitschko brothers. It could have been ignored that Haye couldn’t fight Wladimir because of an injury, but when he chose to fight Valuev instead, it gave many boxing fans the impression that Haye is scared of fighting the Klitschko brothers.

However, Haye believes that the Klitschkos think he’s unafraid of them for some reason.

“The Kitschkos can tell I’m not scared of them,” Haye says. “They try and laugh it off, but I can tell when a fighter is concerned and thinking about what would happen in the ring. They both looked at me and they could see straight away that I was not joking, that I was not getting in the ring with them for a payday. They could tell that I wanted to beat them.”

On the contrary, I think the Klitschko brothers think Haye is afraid of them. They have nothing else to go by but Haye’s actions or lack of them. Words mean nothing when they’re not backed up by positive action. Haye had a chance to fight both of the brothers, but he failed to make the fights. If the Klitschko brothers are afraid of Haye or any other heavyweight, it would seem to be the natural emotion when facing an opponent that wants to beat you. If they weren’t concerned, they would be either dead or badly fooling themselves. How can a fighter not be concerned about an opponent?

I don’t buy that Haye isn’t afraid of the Klitschko brothers. He has to be. If you look at the way Haye fought against Valuev, he showed plenty of respect, and I’d say fear, by staying on the outside and running for most of the fight. If Haye wasn’t afraid, he would have gone right after Valuev in the 1st round and tried to knock him out.

“The t-shirt was just an excuse for them to get angry with me, but their real is that they know I’m not scared of them,” Haye says. “You know, where I grew up it was not wise to be scared of anybody and I’m not going to start now.”

That sounds kind of like wishful thinking on Haye’s part. I don’t know why he’s so concerned with the Klitschko brothers not seeing him as scared. That sounds like Haye needs to drop that mental baggage, because it seems like it’s weighing him down. Why should Haye care how the Klitschkos see him? They probably don’t think highly of him, but Haye should be focused more on just beating them rather than wasting time worrying about not appearing afraid of them. Lennox Lewis often appeared afraid of some his opponents before his fights. But that didn’t stop him from beating most of them.

Haye will be facing 37-year-old John Ruiz, his mandatory challenger, in early 2010. Haye has to get by Ruiz if he wants to face the Klitschko brothers later on in the year.