By William Mackay: WBA heavyweight champion David Haye is stubbornly committed to retiring in October around his 31st birthday rather than fighting a little longer so that he could have enough time to fight both of the Klitschko brothers. Haye’s retirement in October is going to mess up his plans on fighting them, and he’s going to just have to be content with taking on the likes of WBA #1 mandatory challenger Ruslan Chagaev in May and whoever else Haye can squeeze in after that.

Haye does want to fight Wladmir before hanging up his gloves. It’s unclear why Haye isn’t mentioning Vitali Klitschko. If Wladimir is busy, it only seems logical to go after his brother Vitali. Why isn’t Haye doing that? It’s like tacking a two part problem. If you can’t figure out one part, work on the other. Haye seems rigidly dialed into Wladimir for some reason. I see the same inflexibility with Haye in his retirement deadline. Instead of adapting to changing circumstances and slightly altering his goals, Haye is staying the course and will still be retiring. How sad. It’s like the guy is defeating himself with his rigid ideas.

There seems to be a fear of getting beaten as he ages, which is why he’s so focused on retiring before he starts to lose it. In an article at cnn.com, Haye says “You cannot fight forever. I have seen fighters who try to fight into their twilight years and you end up just getting beat by younger, fresher, hungrier guys. Whether the guy is better than you, it is irrelevant, They are younger, fresh and healthy, while you are old and shock worn. Sooner or later you are going to end up coming a cropper. That is how boxing has worked throughout the years, so i want to be one of the very few fighters who get out on top, in their prime.”

Haye has a really negative view on aging and his idea of not wanting to get beaten as he ages seems unhealthy to me. He seems to have a lot of fear about losing and I wonder if it would crush him mentally if that were to happen. What better way to avoid that from happening by getting out of the sport at an incredibly early stage of his career and walking away from millions of dollars that he would have made against the Klitschko brothers.