By William Mackay: If you look at how poorly former WBA heavyweight champion David Haye performed against IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, it makes you wonder whether Haye even tried to win.

The whole thing left me feeling like I’d been tricked into watching the fight. And for all the boxing fans in the UK who purchased the Haye-Klitschko fight on Sky Sports PPV, they must feel more than a little ripped off. Just looking at the types of heavyweight opposition that Haye fought leading up to the Wladimir fight, it had stealth written all over it.

Instead of Haye facing quality guys like Alexander Povetkin, Denis Boytsov, Alexander Dimitrenko, Robert Helenius, and Ruslan Chagaev in his previous five bouts at heavyweight, Haye opted to take on John Ruiz, Monte Barrett, Audley Harrison, Tomasz Bonin, and Nikolay Valuev. I don’t knock Haye for taking on Valuev, because he did hold the World Boxing Association title, but look the other guys are fighters that Haye seemed to be taking it easy with. He wasn’t stepping it up by taking on anyone that you would consider a threat to beating him.

As such, we had Haye coming into the Wladimir fight with only flimsy at best experience at the heavyweight level against quality fighters. Is it any wonder that Haye would be so easily beaten. But what gets me is how much talking Haye did before the fight, making it seem as if he had a real chance when he must have known how over-matched he was in this fight. It’s sad that tons of boxing fans saw this as a fight that Haye was going to win. I knew he had no chance just by looking at the guys he was willing to fight. That told me all I needed to know about what his chances were. Anytime I see a fighter that’s basically taking an easy path to a big fight, a red flag shoots up in my mind and I see them as a bogus fighter. Nine times out of ten, I’m right about it.