By William Mackay: WBA heavyweight champion David Haye (23-1, 21 KO’s) will be taking on the toughest opponent of his career on April 3rd against John Ruiz (44-8-1, 30 KO’s) at the M.E.N. Arena, in Manchester, England. Many boxing fans and writers have Haye as a heavy favorite in this fight and some are even predicting a knockout in the first round of the fight. But Haye may find himself in a real battle with the 38-year-old Ruiz, who has a lot more experience against quality fighters than Haye has had while fighting at heavyweight.

Haye’s experience at the heavyweight level is limited to only three fights – Tomasz Bonin, Monte Barrett and Nikolay Valuev. The rest of Haye’s opponents have been in the cruiserweight division, a division which many people feel is one of the weakest in all of boxing. Haye was a champion at that weight class, to be sure, but what does that actually mean when the talent is slim over there.

Haye lost to Carl Thompson, arguably his best opponent of Haye’s entire eight year pro career. Fans of Haye’s point out that Haye was young and inexperienced then, only 24-years-old and still wet behind the ears so to speak. That may be, but 24 is a good age for most fighters and not really a good excuse to make when trying to explain Haye’s loss to Thompson.

In watching the fight, I noticed that Haye came out slugging like he always does and when Thompson didn’t fold like so many of his other opponents at the cruiserweight level did previously, Haye found himself in an actual fight where he had to take shots. Before you know it, Thompson had Haye on the canvas after landing only a small handful of punches.

Haye then took a small barrage of shots in the corner in the 5th round, causing Haye’s corner man to throw in the towel to keep Haye from taking punishment. I think the fight could have been allowed to go longer, but there’s little doubt that Haye was in trouble and would have likely been flattened if the fight had continued much longer.

What I noticed here is that it didn’t really take that many shots from Thompson to put Haye in a terrible state to the point where he was stumbling around a little and looking unsteady on his feet. If Haye isn’t able to get Ruiz out of there really quickly like some boxing fans think he will, Haye could find himself taking punishment in the same way that he did in his fight with Thompson and get stopped once again.

When you have a fighter with a questionable chin, poor stamina and carrying around a lot of excess muscle on their upper body, bad things can happen, like them getting knocked out. I think Haye could very well get stopped by Ruiz on April 3rd if Haye can’t take Ruiz out quickly.

If Haye fails at scoring a knockout early, he’s going to find himself getting hit a lot and I just don’t have confidence that his weak chin will allow him to take those kinds of shots from Ruiz, even though Ruiz isn’t all that big of a puncher. It doesn’t take massive shots to put Haye down, as we saw in Haye’s fights with Jean Marc Mormeck, Thompson, Lolenga Mock, and Barrett.