By William Mackay: IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (55-3, 49 KO’s) is still hoping that World Boxing Association (WBA) heavyweight champion David Haye (25-1, 23 KO’s) will come to his senses and take the original July 2nd date that the two fighters had initially agreed on. Wladimir has a fight coming up on April 30th against unbeaten Brit Dereck Chisora (14-0, 9 KO’s) and after that, Wladimir could possibly be fighting Tomasz Adamek in September in Poland.
However, July 2nd is still free for Wladimir if Haye wants to step up and take the fight. Haye pulled out of negotiations with Wladimir after finding out that Wladimir wanted a tune-up fight against Chisora. Haye felt that the Chisora-Wladimir would cause Wladimir to either pull out of the July 2nd date, as he would need more time to recover from the Chisora fight, or it would hurt the marketing of the July 2nd Haye-Wladimir fight. Haye feels that his fight with Wladimir will need a lot of marketing to get the maximum pay-per-view benefits.
With Haye set on retiring later this year in October, he needs to take the July 2nd date offered to him by Wladimir. If he doesn’t want to agree to that, then Haye won’t have any other opportunities to fight Wladimir before retiring in October. In that case, Haye will have to bite the bullet, face his fears and take on Vitali Klitschko, a fighter with a stronger chin than Wladimir. It’s unlikely Haye will ever decide to fight Vitali because it would mean an almost guaranteed loss for Haye and one in which he would take a terrible beating. However, if Haye wants the big cash before retiring, he’s going to man up and take the fight with Vitali or else agree to fight Wladimir on July 2nd.
If Haye doesn’t agree to fight Wladimir or Vitali on July 2nd, it will mean that Haye will have to fight his mandatory challenger and that could be a dangerous thing for the weak-chinned Haye. He’s made a living since moving up to the heavyweight division fighting strictly older fighters that are no threat to him. If Haye is forced to fight someone like Denis Boytsov, Alexander Povetkin or Ruslan Chagaev, we could see reduced to jelly on the canvas. He can dish it out, that’s for sure, but Haye’s ability to take it very questionable.
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