By Scott Gilfoid: Before facing the Klitschko brothers and likely getting totally destroyed, I think WBA heavyweight champion David Haye (24-1, 22 KO’s) should prove himself as a heavyweight by fighting the winner of the April 24th clash between Tomasz Adamek (40-1, 27 KO’s) vs. Chris Arreola (28-1, 25 KO’s). I think Haye, if he could beat the winner of this fight and look good in doing so, he would have at least shown that he deserves to be in the same ring with the Klitschko brothers. As of now, I think Haye doesn’t have any business fighting either of the Klitschko brothers because of his lack of experience.

Let’s look at who Haye has actually fought at heavyweight:

Tomasz Bonin
Monte Barrett
Nikolay Valuev
John Ruiz

Haye has beaten three of the four by knockout, but that’s not really saying a whole lot because none of those fighters are in the class of the Klitschko brothers. There’s also a lot of other top guys that Haye could have fought that I feel would have been a much better test for him than Barrett, Bonin, Valuev and Ruiz. While I don’t think that either Adamek or Arreola are the best of the heavyweight contenders, I think they’re a good enough test to see whether Haye has the talent to compete with the Klitschko brothers.

If I was to pick a winner between Adamek and Arreola, I’d have to go with the more established heavyweight Arreola. Adamek has the better skills, there’s no doubt, but he didn’t look good in running around the ring all night long in winning his last fight against the light hitting Jason Estrada. I especially didn’t like the way that Adamek was getting his head snapped back and getting hit so cleanly by Estrada in the later rounds of the fight. It seemed like Adamek would freeze when Estrada would throw a right hand and take the shot without even ducking or trying to block it. Arreola isn’t as fast as Estrada, but he’s fast enough to land his shots on occasion.

I doubt it will take that many punches from Arreola to start rearranging Adamek’s features and bloodying up his face. In the end, I think Arreola will beat up the smaller 220 pound Adamek and make him look like Brian Minto, another small 220 heavyweight that Arreola destroyed in a 4th round stoppage in December.

Haye vs. Arreola – I think this would go badly for Haye. He would try to land his big shots against Arreola hoping to duplicate his win over the 38-year-old Ruiz. However, Arreola won’t go anywhere and will keep coming forward looking to land his big shots. Haye would likely start to run like no tomorrow, making huge circles around the ring to keep the hard hitting Arreola from messing up his face and sending him into unconsciousness. Haye would probably end up throwing less than 10 punches per rounds as he tries to keep Arreola from landing.

I don’t see it working, though. Arreola will cut off the ring and land one of his big chopping right hand that would send Haye down for the count. That’s how I see it. The good thing would be that there would be no waste by having a needless heavyweight clash between Haye and the Klitschko brothers, because Arreola would likely weed Haye out. Think of it as Arreola being a prerequisite course for Haye before moving onto a tougher subject like the Klitschko brothers. Haye still hasn’t that course and if he jumps up several levels from the likes of Ruiz and Valuev, I see it going badly for Haye.