By Dan Ambrose: WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (41-1, 38 KO’s) has been after David Haye (24-1, 22 KO’s) for well over a year trying to get him into the ring for a fight to see if he’s as good as he claims he is. Thus far, neither Vitali or his brother, IBF/WBC heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, have able to get Haye to step up and accept a fight with either of them. In an article by Dan Rafael as ESPN, Vitali said “He [Haye] jumped twice. One time he signed to fight Wladimir and came up with some injury, and we never received the medical proof of the injury. The second time, he says he wants to fight against me, we agree and he refused to sign the exact same contract he had to fight Wladimir, and he jumped to fight [WBA heavyweight champion Nikolay] Valuev. My personal opinion is that he is smart enough to know that if he fights a Klitschko, he loses the fight and his title, and maybe his life – and he doesn’t want to do that. He’s world champion only by talking.”

Haye has a different explanation for why he hasn’t fought the Klitschko brothers. He hasn’t been happy with the contracts with the Klitschko brothers, even though they reportedly offered him a 50-50 deal to fight. There’s a sticking point for Haye and he doesn’t seem to be able to agree on what they’re asking him. However, Haye says there’s too much money on the table for the fight not to be made and he says he’s going to fight the Klitschkos in the future. What makes it difficult to believe that Haye will eventually fight the Klitschko brothers is the short time line that Haye is giving himself before he retires. He says he’ll retire by next year in October when he turns 31. This means unless he starts agreeing to fight the Klitschko’s soon, he’s not going to be able to without running over his deadline, and that’s something he says he won’t do. He’s made up his mind to retire at 31, and doesn’t want to go back on a promise he made to himself.

In article at the BBC, Haye says “There’s a lot more behind the scenes the fans aren’t aware of. Boxers call each other out but when it comes to signing the contact and the money situation, the television rights, the venues, no one hears about that. They just hear one fighter say they want to fight another fighter and assume that means the other person’s going to turn up on the day. There’s so much more to it than meets the eye. To understand it takes years of knowing the characters, the different lawyers involved, it’s a complex, complex game. But the fights always, always happen – myself and the Klitschkos, it will happen. There’s loads up banter back and forth – he’s ducking me, I’m ducking him – but we will fight and they’re getting knocked out, and once I do that all the hype beforehand becomes irrelevant.”

Haye is wrong about all the fights getting made. There’s a lot of big fights that never happen, case in point the one between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. There’s probably just as many huge fights that never get made compared to the ones that do. The reason is fighters and promoters are afraid, so they take the safe route and choose mainly fights they feel they have a good chance to win. Haye is an example of someone that still hasn’t had a big fight since moving up to the heavyweight division. For whatever reason, he’s choosing to fight guys like Monte Barrett and Audley Harrison rather than taking on better opponents.