By William Mackay: Talks between management representatives for IBF/WBO heavyweight champ Wladimir Klitschko (54-3, 48 KO’s) and World Boxing Association heavyweight champion David Haye (24-1, 22 KO’s) will start this Thursday according to news from Sky Sports. Haye and his manger/trainer will be looking to get a better deal out of Wladimir than last time they negotiated for a fight a year ago in June. Haye didn’t have a title at that time and had only fought twice at heavyweight against Tomasz Bonin and Monte Barrett. Haye has since beaten WBA heavyweight champion Nikolay Valuev and John Ruiz in back to back fights.

In looking for bargaining power, Haye’s manager Booth will dangle one of the large British football stadiums as bait to get a better deal from Wladimir Klitschko. Also having the WBA title in Haye’s possession should help him get a better deal, because Wladimir wants to badly unify the titles. His brother WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko holds one of the titles and Wladimir the other two. The only strap that’s not in the Klitschko brothers’ hands is Haye’s WBA title.

However, Wladimir may have to pay a heavy price to get a shot at winning it because Booth is asking for parity for the fight, with his fighter Haye getting 50% of the purse. It’s a hard thing to imagine that Haye wants a 50-50 deal because he has so little experience at heavyweight and his cruiserweight experience doesn’t count for much for a lot of people because of the lack of stars in the division.

Haye beat most of his opponents at cruiserweight, but at the end of the day the division is considered a weak one with shorter and weaker fighters compared to the heavyweights. However, in asking for a 50-50 deal right off the bat, this could be Booth’s high offer and he could be persuaded to come down to a lesser amount to make the fight happen.

If Haye and Booth stick to the 50-50 deal, then it’s probably not realistic for a Haye-Klitschko fight to take place because Klitschko makes huge money no matter he fights. It would come down to the principal of the matter. He would obviously make more money in a fight against Haye than he would in his normal bouts, but it would be hard to give Haye a fight on even terms because of his lack of fights at heavyweight.

What Haye has going for him besides the WBA title and the lure of putting their fight in one of the huge stadiums in the UK is his ability to promote with his talking. He speaks well and is brilliant at promoting a fight. Haye would have to travel to the U.S. with Wladimir to get fans over there to get excited about the fight. Few people have ever seen Haye fight in the United States, and it would be interesting to see if they can get excited about a fight where they don’t know much about the fighter.

Ideally, Haye should have fought a couple of battle worn stars like Bernard Hopkins and Samuel Peter in the United States before taking on Klitschko. U.S. fans would at least know who Haye is and would likely, depending on whether Haye could actually beat Hopkins and Peter, purchase a Klitschko-Haye fight on PPV. But a Klitschko-Haye fight right now wouldn’t draw flies and would have to be shown on regular HBO and not PPV to get many eyeballs watching it.

Booth is reportedly confident about putting together a fight with Wladimir and Haye. That’s a good sign, because yesterday he seemed struck on wanting nothing less than a 50-50 deal and that’s probably not realistic. Haye says “Adam said after a meeting on Thursday [with the Klitschko management] I will know more. But until then, I’ll leave Adam to it. I’m here relaxing and enjoying myself now.”