By Eric Thomas: Former heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis doesn’t think that WBA heavyweight champion David Haye can win a decision against IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko. This is kind of a no-brainer because Haye can’t box and is often plagued by a low work rate in his fights.

For example, in Haye’s close win over Nikolay Valuev in 2009, Haye average little over 10 punches thrown per round, and almost all of them being pot shots. Throwing 10 potshots per round against Wladimir won’t win many rounds unless Haye is landing cleanly with every shot, and that’s not likely because of Wladimir’s defensive nature.

Lewis said this to thesun.co.uk: “My heart says David will win, but my head is saying Wladimir because, in most cases, if you go into another boxer’s territory you really have to show you have won the fight. I feel David is going to have to knock him out.”

If Lewis is trying to tippy toe around saying that Wladimir would beat Haye by a controversial hometown decision if he wins on points I think he’s wrong. It’s no real secret that Wladimir has the much better boxing skills compared to Haye. Wladimir often wins his fights with his jab, whereas Haye wins by knockout.

Haye doesn’t really possess much of a jab and he’s not going to be able to land it anyway because of his limited reach. If Haye wins it will be because he was able to knock Wladimir out. If Wladimir wins on points, it’s because he kept Haye on the outside eating jabs all night long.

But I don’t see this as being a close fight. Either Wladimir will dominate beat Haye without any trouble or Haye will score a knockout. Wladimir, of course, will have the advantages in this fight because he’s a lot more experienced against better opposition and is a lot bigger as well. Wladimir isn’t limited to throwing pot shots like Haye in order to win.