By William Mackay: WBA heavyweight champion David Haye (25-1, 23 KO’s) believes his hand speed will be the key ingredient to him beating IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (55-3, 49 KO’s) when/if they meet this summer.

With their inability to fight in the past because of injuries and problems with negotiating a fight and Wladimir’s bagging abdominal injury, you can’t count on this fight taking place until you see both of them in the same ring. Wladimir can sustain an injury at any time, and the same goes for Haye. But if the fight does take place, Haye thinks his hand speed is going to be the key to making up for his lack of height and reach.

Speaking with Sky Sports, Haye said “Speed is the key. It’s what opens up all the doors to landing big power punches. If you’ve got a big game plan, if you’re focused then you can pull it off. I don’t see the weight and size difference being a big factor with Wladimir. Once again people are going to write me off saying I’m too small and I can’t do it but time and time again I’ve proved a great little man beats a good big man.”

That’s funny. Haye is calling himself a “Great little man.” I honestly don’t see any greatness in Haye’s game. I do see some careful match-making since he moved up to the heavyweight division. Come on, look at who Haye has fought: 38-year-old Monte Barrett, 36-year-old Nikolay Valuev, 38-year-old John Ruiz and 39-year-old Audley Harrison. Is Haye saying he’s great because he beat those guys? I may be wrong but I think I can pick out some not so great heavyweights that would clean up on those fighters. Would we call them great too?

I wasn’t impressed with Haye’s opposition at cruiserweight either. No fights against guys like Marco Huck, Tomasz Adamek, Denis Lebedev or Alexander Frenkel. Instead, we see Haye fighting Enzo Maccarinelli and Jean Marc Mormeck. As we’ve seen recently, Maccarinelli has been getting knocked out left and right. Mormeck moved up in weight to heavyweight and has looked absolutely horrible.

Haye isn’t going to beat Wladimir landing an occasional shot. Haye will have to land a lot of punches throughout the fight to win, and that’s just not possible. Haye is too short, lacks the arm length, and flexibility to land against Wladimir. This is going to be like watching a replay of the Samuel Peter vs. Robert Helenius bout, where Peter was too short to land more than an occasional shot. Haye won’t knock Wladimir out with one punch and unless Haye goes rabbit crazy with rabbit punches while in close, I see this as a mismatch with Wladimir beating Haye with only rarely getting hit.