By William Mackay: If you take the time to watch heavyweight David Haye’s fights against Monte Barrett and John Ruiz, you’ll notice that Haye threw quite a few rabbit punches in those fights and some of them produced knockdowns. In the case of Haye’s fight with former WBA heavyweight champion Ruiz last April, Haye really unloaded on Ruiz with rabbit shots when the two fighters would go into a clinch. Haye never stopped fighting when they would clinch, and he’d work his punches around to the back of Ruiz’s head.

Granted, Haye was penalized one time in the 1st round for tagging Ruiz in the back of the head, he continued to get away with the rabbit punches after the 1st. My question is whether the referee working the Haye-Harrison will take away points or, if need be, disqualify Haye if he gets too carried away with his extracurricular rabbit punching? I don’t see how this kind of thing could be allowed. When I see the Ruiz-Haye fight, I see a fighter that should have have been penalized at least five times for rabbit punches and at that point, I think Haye should have been disqualified because it wasn’t as if his rabbit shots weren’t changing the flow of the fight.

They clearly were badly hurting Ruiz. I don’t know if this would have changed the outcome of the fight, because he seemed way over the hill at 38 to be fighting a guy like Haye. But if you have a fighter teeing off with rabbit punches, you got to stop this behavior immediately by penalizing it and if it continues, you have to consider disqualification. Had there been an American referee like Lawrence Cole, Jay Nady or Joe Cortez working the Haye vs. Ruiz fight, I have a strong suspicion that Haye would have lost a lot of points and maybe disqualified if he continued to land shots to the back of Ruiz’s head.

If I’m Harrison, this is something I’m going to be talking about a great deal before the fight because I can see Harrison getting stunned with one of Haye’s rabbit shots when he goes to tie him up. Harrison is a big heavyweight and he likes to clinch every now and the, but if he has to worry about getting tagged in the back of the noggin every time, it’s going to cause him to not want to clinch. It’s up to the referee to put a stop to that kind of thing as soon as possible. I couldn’t see Harrison getting a way with tagging Haye low over and over again and knocking him down from the shots and then having the knockdowns count, like in the Haye-Ruiz fight.