Will Haye be forced to fight Chagaev?

By Boxing News - 03/29/2011 - Comments

Image: Will Haye be forced to fight Chagaev?By Scott Gilfoid: With the news that Ruslan Chagaev’s promotional company Universum possibly suing the WBA because they’re allowing WBA heavyweight champion David Haye to fight a unification bout against IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko in the summer, we may see a fight between Chagaev and Haye if Universum wins their possible lawsuit against the WBA.

The problem here is that Chagaev defeated 40-year-old Kali Meehan in a WBA title eliminator bout last year and was supposed to have gotten a title shot against Haye by April. Well, here it about to turn April and sure as heck doesn’t look like Haye is about to fight Chagaev.

I don’t know what the chances of success are for Universum if this thing goes to court, but I think they might have a good chance of winning and getting the Klitschko-Haye fight called off – at least until Haye fights Chagaev. I can just see it. Haye doesn’t get his big money mega fight against Wladimir and is forced to fight Chagaev.

Haye then gets knocked out by one of Chagaev’s powerful left hooks and is left out in the cold as far as a future fight with the Klitschkos. Chagaev then takes on one of the Klitschkos and gets a nice payday. That would be so sad. Haye would miss out on the big Klitschko payday and might have to put off his year-end retirement. I can’t see Haye retiring at that point, can you? It would take him a considerable amount of time to build up his name again to the point where the boxing public could stomach a fight between him and one of the Klitschko brothers.

I’m sure Haye could work himself back to the point where he is now. Heck, there are a lot of aging heavyweights in the division that Haye can fight and get a nice streak going like the one he’s been on since 2008 with his fights against aging heavyweights like 39-year-old Audley Harrison, 38-year-old Monte Barrett, 38-year-old John Ruiz and 36-year-old Nikolay Valuev.



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