By William Mackay: A potential fight between WBA heavyweight champion David Haye and IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko appears to be a long ways off from happening according to Adam Booth, the trainer/manager for Haye. There has been a lot of talk, some of it fueled by Haye and Wladimir’s manager, that a fight could be happening soon. However, Booth said this in article at the dailymail.co.uk: “It’s still a bit premature at the moment. We’re still swimming through the quagmire of boxing negotiations.”
That could mean anything, but it’s not a good sign that Booth isn’t sounding positive about a Haye-Wladimir fight. Haye has a title defense coming up on May 21st against either Ruslan Chagaev or Alexander Povetkin. He’s not particularly interested in facing either of those two fighters. That’s understandable because he’ll make much less money compared to a Klitschko fight, and Haye runs a very real risk of getting beaten by them. Haye is basically completely untested at heavyweight still despite having fought at this weight class since 2008. The problem is Haye has been matched against aging heavyweights and hasn’t taken on any young fighters with power and ability since making his move up.
Facing old guys like journeyman Monte Barrett, Nikolay Valuev, Audley Harrison and John Ruiz is no kind of preparation for what Haye would be facing if he took on Chagaev or Povetkin. Those guys can fight, and can punch. Haye was dropped by Barrett and hurt. A loss to Povetkin or Chagaev would destroy any chance Haye would have of a Klitschko fight. Understandably, he would like to go straight to a Klitschko fight. However, Wladimir has a tune-up bout against Dereck Chisora on April 30th and a fight against Tomasz Adamek in September. If Haye wants to fight Wladimir, it will have to be in between those dates on July 2nd.
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