By Richard McNamara: During the course of the last few weeks/months I have sat back and analyzed a lot of articles churned out by what some people would and do refer to as very poor boxing writers. So I have decided to put the record straight. I have promised myself to remain unbiased and write this article based on facts, not fiction I will give my opinions but I’m happy to open myself up to criticism and accept it, not blacklist someone because I fear views of others, and you never know maybe I will learn from it.

Much talk recently has been about World Boxing Association heavyweight champion David Haye fighting one of the Klitschko brothers and for obvious reasons, opinion has been divided. I personally do not see a walk in the park for either Haye or the Klitschko’s if/when these fights happen I see a tough night’s work for both parties involved. What has somewhat confused me are the constant remarks by certain writers and people who post on here, that Haye ducked/backed out of both fights, so time to set the record straight. Haye never backed out of either. Lets start with the Wlad fight, Haye got injured or supposedly got injured, opinion is divided here because of the Setanta farce, either way Haye gave Wlad 7 weeks notice Wlad rightly or wrongly chose not to wait and decided to fight Ruslan Chagaev instead.

I can understand exactly why he did this, training, peaking and a payday it made sense but at the end of it all Haye never backed out, he was forced to pull out citing injury and was not granted a postponement. As for Vitali, well that fight never existed so how can Haye of pulled out? The fight only existed in the media, some fan’s and promoter’s minds it never existed on paper, no contract was ever signed sealed and delivered.

Again rightly or wrongly it was Haye who chose to not sign and decided to fight Valuev instead. I can understand why he did this, its common knowledge that the Klitschkos were offering to fight him, but citing some very bizarre if not extreme rematch clauses. In Haye now being the WBA champion hopefully if/when these fights happen, we as fans will avoid this and not have to put up with a fighter vacating a title to oblige rematches with both brothers, should he have won.

This would have achieved nothing for the Heavy Weight division and nothing for Haye. Being WBA Champ basically puts him in a better position to now negotiate with the Klitschkos , better for Haye, better for boxing and better for us as fans. Finally there have been some articles and posts from various people lambasting Haye’s choice of Valuev as an opponent, and the performance he put in to take the belt.

What I will say to this, is as a boxing fan I have not seen either of the Klitschkos make any real concerted effort to get Valuev in the ring over the years, why? If Valuev was such an easy fight why has neither brother really gone looking for him? He may have looked poor against an old Holyfield and won a dubious decision that night, but due to his sheer size and fairly sound technique he’s a difficult customer for any opponent.

It may not have been the prettiest nor most exciting fight that Haye has been involved in but its utter madness to base a man’s chances on one performance. Injury and all I think he did a pretty good job considering., he comprehensively out boxed Valuev and with a busted hand shook him to the bones in points of that fight.

Finally I have always believed sites like this are here to open up debate, so rather than racially insulting each other, writing biased prejudice articles with no substance so as just to start the whole “my countries better than yours” argument and get a hit rate, might I suggest that certain writers think long and hard before writing another article and lets get this site back to where it should be and more importantly lets get back to what its all about.

I welcome any responses

RMC