Photo credit: Pavel Terekhov – By Jim Dower: For the past year, boxing fans have been hoping for a fight between David Haye and one of the Klitschko brothers. It looked like Haye was all set to fight Wladimir Klitschko last year for his IBF/WBO heavyweight titles in Germany. However, Haye came up with a back injury only weeks to go for the fight. Rather than wait several weeks to see if Haye’s back injury would heal up or continue to be injured, in disgust, Wladimir moved on and fought Ruslan Chagaev instead on June 20th 2009.

Haye even came close to fighting Vitali Klitschko for his WBC heavyweight title last year. Haye, however, took off during the negotiations and ended up resurfacing with the announcement that he had signed to fight the much slower, weaker WBA heavyweight champion Nikolay Valuev. As boxing fans already know, Haye beat Valuev by a dull, close 12 round decision in a fight that Haye averaged only 10 punches thrown per round. After winning the WBA title, Haye said he wanted to fight either of the Klitschko brothers after he defends his title against mandatory challenger 38-year-old John Ruiz. Haye then went on to stop Ruiz in the 9th round recently.

Haye then started low level negotiations with Wladimir Klitschko for a planned fight. However, Haye now wants to rest and spend more time with his family. The negotiations apparently will need a lot more time before they’re ironed out – if they ever are. In the meantime, Haye is now reportedly saying he wants to fight 38-year-old Vitali Klitschko next. It’s unknown why the sudden interest in fighting Vitali other than he looks a beatable now that he’s starting slow down and throw less punches.

Right now it’s anyone’s guess whether Haye will fight Wladimir next, Vitali next or perhaps 38-year-old Audley Harrison. There are rumors that Haye is possibly interested in facing Audley in the UK in his next fight. Let’s hope those are just rumors because Harrison hasn’t really done anything to deserve a title shot at this point.

He just beat Michael Sprott in a 12th round KO, but that’s hardly enough to deserve being given a shot at the champion. But then again, you could say same thing about Alberto Sosnowski having not really earned the shot to fight Vitali for his WBC strap, since Sosnowski hadn’t beaten any top level fighters and had recently fought to a 12 round draw with the one top 15 contender Francesco Pianeta on his resume.

So the question is whether Haye will skip the dangerous fight against the speedy, more powerful and athletic Wladimir to take on the plodding Vitali Klitschko or will Haye just opt not to face the Klitschko brothers at all and instead milk his WBA title for all it’s worth. Haye is really hard to predict, because he talks like he really wants to fight the Klitschko brothers, but then seems to go in the opposite direction when it comes time to fight them.

There are plenty of easy options out there for Haye if he just wants to make money and not face the kinds of risks that the Klitschko brothers will present to him. Haye could fight 45-year-old Bernard Hopkins, 41-year-old James Toney, a rematch with Valuev or one of the many lesser heavyweights in the division.