By Mark Hepplestall: The Haye Vs Klitschko saga continues with claim and counter claim about who is offering what and who is ducking the other. Well unlike some of the less educated people claiming it’s all down to one side it’s obvious that unlike the contract offers the blame lies 50/50.

Firstly past fights and injuries, before Haye won the World Boxing Association (WBA) title Haye was on course to fight Wladimir for his versions of the heavyweight title and had to pull out at the last minute with a back injury. Now this injury was a fake injury in my opinion because Setanta Sports went bust and Haye was fighting for free which is unacceptable considering it could be his last fight. More recently Wladimir pulled out of a fight with Derek Chisora will a similar injury just before the fight when he wouldn’t be in hard training, with Chisora claiming he is ducking him Wladimir is rumoured to provide medical evidence and people say Haye didn’t. Well Haye signed a legally binding contract so one of two things happened, either Haye provided evidence suggesting he couldn’t fight therefore getting himself out of legal trouble or Haye and Wladimir realised without the Setanta Sports money Wladimir is only getting his RTL money and suggested they call off the fight. Could Haye have got fake medical documents? Well Andre Dirrel had a CT scan which points to Neurological Damage so make your own opinions.

Secondly Contract offers, David Haye the bad boy of contracts agreed to a contract before he won the WBA world title which was about a 70 – 30 split before K2 take their promotional fee. (K2 owned by Wladimir Klitschko) which makes it more like 80 – 20. Other conditions include the fight based in Germany, a rematch clause and a forced fight against Vitali if Haye is victorious Haye said in a phone interview with Setanta Sports “I’ve got to fight three Klitschkos in my next three fights,” Haye said. “I think they’ve got an uncle that does a bit of boxing! Seriously, you should have seen what they tried to make me agree to before! This was a massive compromise on my part. It was a joke what they wanted. It was ridiculous. I honestly thought it was a hidden-camera TV show.” Since Haye won the WBA title he has done what he intended by winning a world recognized heavyweight title, so he doesn’t need Klitschko’s for their world titles. Wladimir needs the Haye fight as he doesn’t really have a career defining fight unless you count the Sultan Ibragimov fight which was an awfully one sided and boring fight, unless you like jab, jab and clinch. Vitali has a career defining fight in which he lost to Lennox Lewis, he also needs a career defining fight and is planning on retiring for good this year.

More recently Haye has been asking for a 50/50 split now he holds the WBA title. Why does he deserve a 50/50 split? Well firstly it’s a unification bout; both boxers should be looked at as equals as both hold versions of the world title. Secondly Haye is the only person to sell as many tickets as Wladimir, if Haye can sell out the M.E.N in Manchester against Audley Harrison who doesn’t even deserve to be on the undercard, this shows his commercial value. Thirdly Haye is estimated to have made £6 million from the Audley Harrison fight, opposed to Wladimir’s £2 million per fight not depending on the opponent on RTL TV, just imagine the PPV buys that Haye will bring in if this fight happens.

Latest contract negotiations revealed in an interview with The Guardian Booth said “I have been negotiating with Bernd Boente, and two days ago I offered him a 50-50 split of everything, including the British pay-per-view money, and that the fight could be on RTL [the German TV station] and could be held anywhere they wanted to make the most revenue, including in Germany.” However Boente replied “No point continuing. Forget about it. You do your fight and we’ll do ours.” When pressed on why he rejected the offer he replied “Adam Booth is talking complete nonsense. What he is not saying is that he has told me that if there is another German TV deal for the fight that is better than RTL then we should pay the difference. We have to honour our contract with RTL. Even if ARD [the rival German broadcaster] were to offer to pay more it would only be €300,000-€400,000, which is peanuts when compared with the worldwide pay-per-view.” What this means is Booth and Haye are asking Boente and Wladimir to buy them out of the RTL contract so they can negotiate with other TV channels, including PPV I assume? I actually think that is a good idea because they can make the money back and more by staring a bidding war between TV stations. Also I don’t understand where Boente is getting his estimated money from, because surly such a big draw such as Wladimir Klitschko can make more money on PPV or other networks then €3 million.

Anyway this contract isn’t out the woods, Team Klitschko are asking too much including a 50/50 split of Haye’s PPV money and global revenue, however Wladimir is keeping his RTL money which is his exclusively, which sort of suggests it’s not a 50/50 split after all is it. However you look at it I think Wladimir is negotiating with Adamek and will be his opponent in April instead of Haye or Chisora. If this is the case the smoke has finally lifted.

References

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/dec/21/david-haye-wladimir-klitschko-boxing

http://www.espn.co.uk/boxing/sport/story/63778.html

http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=19316&more=1

http://www.worldboxingnews.net/2010/12/rtl-deal-may-give-chisora-hope.html