By William Mackay: The July 2nd unification fight between IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (55-3, 49 KO’s) and WBA heavyweight champion David Haye (25-1, 23 KO’s) is basically going to come down to whether the 30-year-old Haye can land one of his long looping pot shot power punches or not.

Those are really the only punches in Haye’s arsenal where he’s able to throw with a lot of power at the heavyweight level. Haye doesn’t have big power in close as we’ve seen again and again in his fight against aging heavyweights Audley Harrison, John Ruiz, Nikolay Valuev and Monte Barrett. The only dangerous punches that Haye has in close are his rabbit shots that he sometimes lands.

Other than that, Haye doesn’t possess real big power on the inside and his flurries that he likes to throw at close range are not something Wladimir has to worry about unless he’s hurt by one of Haye’s looping pot shots. This is a fight that is basically going to be a test whether Haye can land one of his looping shots from long range.

If Wladimir is able to move away from those punches or pick them off with his gloves then Haye has no chance of winning. He won’t be able to beat Wladimir when they come in close range because Haye is no powerful at close range than Eddie Chambers or some of the other heavyweights that Wladimir has easily dispatched in the past.

Haye’s only chance in close is to land a rabbit shot and have the referee just ignore it without stopping the action and either taking points away from Haye or disqualifying him on the spot, if he’s making a habit of throwing multiple rabbit punches. A long range fight will be like the lottery for Haye where he’ll have to be incredibly lucky for him to land a pot shot to hurt or stop Wladimir. Haye is probably going to be forced to eat jabs until his face swells up and both eyes shut. Hopefully, his trainer Adam Booth does the wise thing and stops the fight before Haye gets too badly beaten up.