By Sean McDaniel: David Haye gave it his best shot tonight but in the end he was too short, too light and too limited in terms of boxing skills to beat IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko at the Imtech Arena in front of 50,000 fans. Wladimir won the fight by a lopsided 12 round decision. Haye gamely tried his best to take Wladimr out in the 1st round, but his punches rarely landed after the third.

Haye appeared to stun Wladimir in the 3rd and the 12th, but not enough to where Haye could do anything to take advantage of it. And Wladimir continued to fight hard and fire back with powerful jabs and right hands. Both fighters suffered with poor accuracy with their punches.

Haye’s head and body movement made it hard for Wladimir to connect as much as he would have liked. He did land a lot of jabs, however, and did enough to win most of the rounds. Instead of Haye being the one to do the pressuring in the fight it was Wladimir who was the aggressor. No doubt he had seen Haye’s fight against Nikolay Valuev in 2009 and noticed that Haye is much less effective when a fighter is coming at him, forcing him to fight going backwards rather than forward. Haye tried to stand his ground but Wladimir’s powerful jabs had a way of clearing Haye out and putting him on the run. Wladimir lost a point in the 7th because of excessive leaning.

Haye’s constant complaining about Wladimir’s clinching and leaning before the fight seemed to have paid off in this case with referee Genaro Rodriguez taking a point away from the big Ukrainian. However, it was only one point and Haye needed a lot of points just to get back in the fight. Haye lost a point for flopping on the canvas and was given a standing eight count by the referee. By the 12th, Haye was desperate and in need of a knockout. He did land a hard right hand that had Wladimir holding on but that was the extent of it. Haye couldn’t take Wladimir out and had to settle for a 12 round loss instead.

The fight showed that Haye has serious limitations with his offense that would need to be fixed if he had hopes of facing one of the Klitschko brothers in the future. Haye’s game plan of trying to pot shot Wladimir and hope to hurt him was a losing strategy. Haye didn’t have the reach or the height to land often enough to hurt Wladimir.