Photo credit – Pavel Terekhov – By Chris Williams: WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (39-2, 37 KO’s) is still holding out hope that WBA heavyweight champion David Haye (24-1, 22 KO’s) will step up to the plate and fight him or his brother IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko. Vitali, 38, is disappointed by Haye’s seemingly reluctance to fight him and he’s also unhappy with the lack of big named opponents for him to fight. This Saturday night, Vitali will be fighting the little known Polish heavyweight Alberto Sosnowski (45-2-1, 27 KO’s) at the Veltins Arena, Gelsenkirchen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany.

Besides Haye, Vitali was hoping to fight former WBA heavyweight champion Nikolay Valuev, but the two were unable to come to a financial agreement for a fight. This left Vitali with the need to dig up an opponent. Sosnowski was there, so he got the call. This fight figures to be a huge mismatch, but perhaps Sosnowski might be able to fight above his level and make it interesting for awhile.

In an article at the Lasvegassun.com, Klitschko had this to say about Haye: “I want to fight David Haye very much and my brother wants to fight him also. He had a fight against Wladimir and two weeks before the fight he [Haye] explained [complained] about some injury that nobody believes in. Then we were ready to sign the contract to fight Haye and he jumped also and tried to come up with an excuse. David Haye understands that a fight against either of the Klitschko brothers would be the end of his career.”

Haye does seem reluctant to fight the Klitschko brothers, but that’s not all that surprising. Before Haye was the champion, the previous two WBA heavyweight champions Ruslan Chagaev and Nikolay Valuev, weren’t exactly eager to fight the Klitschko brothers either. So this isn’t really unexpected. Haye is more of a cruiserweight/heavyweight hybrid and not a super heavyweight like the Klitschko brothers. At 217, Haye would likely be in way over his head against the 250 pound Klitschko brothers. It would be the equivalent of a welterweight facing a light heavyweight. A welterweight might do okay for a few rounds, but sooner or later he’s got wore down by the bigger fighter.

In Haye’s case, he’d be giving up way too much height and reach to the Klitschko brothers and could end up getting knocked cold without really being able to land much of anything. I never expected Haye to fight the Klitschko brothers after he came up with the injury before the fight with Wladimir and then pulled out of a fight with Vitali. I wasn’t surprised that Haye was able to beat Valuev, because 47-year-old Evander Holyfield had already shown a year earlier that Valuev was there to be beaten, even though Holyfield lost a controversial decision to Valuev in their fight held in Switzerland.

As for the lack of competition in the heavyweight division, Vitali says “I’m ready to fight anyone. Who is left? Wladimir is knocking out the best American fighters. I just fought Kevin Johnson. Who else? Right now that’s one problem. There’s no big names. I hope that big names come up and I’m still fighting. I think this year we’ll see new names that will interest the public.” It’s difficult to guess who Vitali is talking about, because there really isn’t any “new names” unless he’s talking about the 33-year-old Tomasz Adamek.

However, Adamek, a former light heavyweight and cruiserweight, is hardly a popular fighter that is drawing much interest from the American public. He just beat Chris Arreola, but he was staggered at least twice in the fight and didn’t show much of any power. I’m afraid that’s not an opponent that will be interesting to the public, unless Vitali is talking about in Germany. They would probably be interested in seeing Vitali fight Adamek, but then again, they think Vitali’s fight against Sosnowski is exciting, so go figure.