By Jim Dower: IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko wasn’t impressed in the least with the performance from WBA heavyweight champion David Haye tonight, saying that Haye had fought identical to many of the guys that Wladimir had dominated recently. Haye had been less than complimentary about Wladimir’s prior opposition, feeling that they weren’t good fighters.

But Haye looked little better tonight in a 12 round unanimous decision loss. Wladimir out-landed Haye 2-1 in punches landed and was often able to nail him with jabs and occasionally with right hands despite all the movement that Haye was doing in the fight.

Wladimir said this to Sky Sports News: “I didn’t really get challenged in the ring. He [Haye] was like all of them, all my recent opponents. After three rounds basically David Haye gave up on his strategy and was very cautious. He connected a couple of punches but I wasn’t hurt in any of the fight.”

Wladimir had more problems in fights against Samuel Peter, Lamon Brewster and Eddie Chambers than he did with Haye. It looked like Haye simply didn’t have to size or the courage needed to walk through Wladimir’s big shots in order to land his own. Peter and Brewster took Wladimir’s best shots and came back with hard punches of their own. Haye was unwilling to sacrifice getting hit to get near enough to hurt Wladimir.

The story of the fight was that Haye was backing away rather than being the one to try and win. With all the talk that Haye had done during the lead up to the fight, it made Haye look bad that he wasn’t trying to back up his talk with bold fighting. Haye looked less courageous than some of the guys that Wladimir had dominated recently. The difference here is that those guys didn’t talk trash ahead of time over and over with Wladimir in the same way that Haye did.