By Scott Gilfoid: When I look at the July 2nd unification bout between IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko and WBA heavyweight champ David Haye, I see this as basically a modern day repeat of the November 2000 fight between champion Lennox Lewis and his much shorter challenger David Tua. The fight is about the same thing with how each fighter goes about his business.

Wladimir, like Lewis, is a superb boxer who likes to jab, grab and pound away with right hands from the outside, whereas Haye is very similar to Tua the way that he is shorter and tends to throw hail wild looping shots hoping to stun his opponents. Tua was the type of fighter that when he had an opponent hurt from one of his looping hooks, he would open up with a quick flurry of shots to take them out.

However, against Lewis, Tua’s wild one at a time desperation shots were easily picked up by Lewis. Tua just didn’t have the reach to hit Lewis in the chin in that fight, and Lewis wasn’t going to take any chances by looking to slug with him. This is basically what we have with Haye vs. Klitschko. Haye is a short 6’2″ fighter who will be coming into the fight much lighter than the 247 pound Wladimir and won’t have nearly enough size to land with any consistency. It’s going to be pure desperation with Haye. He’s going to be stuck throwing one punch at a time and when he’s unable to land those wild shots, Haye is going to have to settle for eating jabs all night.

I think Haye might bum rush Wladimir at some point when he realizes he’s taking too much punishment, but Haye won’t have the size and power to move Wladimir. Haye’s power is really over-rated in my view. Haye has never beaten a really quality heavyweight before and we saw how limited he was when he barely beat Nikolay Valuev. I had Valuev winning that fight. Haye couldn’t stop Valuev and he sure won’t be able to stop Wladmir.

It’s going to be Tua-Lewis all over again with Haye trying to win based on throwing one desperate shot at a time and then taking massive amounts of hard jabs to the head in between his wild shots. Where I see this fight deviating from the Lewis-Tua fight is that I see Haye’s trainer/manager Adam Booth pulling the plug on the fight early when it becomes apparent that Haye is taking too much punishment and isn’t competitive.