By William Mackay: WBA heavyweight champion David Haye (25-1, 23 KO’s) is positively gleeful about having recently gotten under IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko’s skin in their meeting in Manhattan to promote the fight. Haye is counting on making Wladimir as angry as possible to get him to break out of his usual jab and grab fight plan so that Haye can get him into a war.

If Wladimir goes to war with Haye, this would likely favor Haye because he likes to fight all out and has enough power to take Wladimir out if he lands one of his big bombs. However, Haye’s chances go way down if Wladimir fights under control, stays on the outside and uses his jab to spear Haye from the outside.

Haye said this after his meeting with Wladimir on Tuesday: “I’ve never seen him so aggressive before. Wladimir tries to act all calm and cool, but at one stage I was sure he was going to jump across the table and try and hit me. I knows he’s up for the fight and he’s not going to come out and do his usual jab, jab and grab. He’s going to go to war that’s what we all want. I can see it in his eyes, he genuinely despises me and that makes for a tremendous fight. When you get someone who wants to do some damage to t the other guy, he comes at him.”

I think Haye is less concerned about putting on a good fight and more interested in getting an edge so that he’ll have a better chance of winning. If Haye were more interested in pleasing the boxing fans that pay to see him fight, he would have jumped on his last opponent Audley Harrison in the opening round to try and take him out instead of doing pretty much nothing until the 3rd round. If Wladimir is dumb enough to fall into Haye’s trap then he may pay for it by getting knocked out. However, even if Wladimir does go right at Haye, we still might see Wladimir easily winning the fight because he is a much better fighter than anyone Haye has ever faced before. Wladimir could quickly dominate and take out the smaller 6’2″ Haye without much of a struggle. We’re talking a super heavyweight facing a pumped up cruiserweight. Haye is the Evander Holyfield facing a Riddick Bowe sized Wladimir. As you all know, Holyfield fought hard but still wound up losing two out of his three fights with Bowe.