By William Mackay: David Haye (26-2, 24 KO’s) sees WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (45-2, 41 KO’s) as an easy mark for the pickings due to the big lumbering Ukrainian’s lack of hand and foot speed. Haye figures that he’ll be able to do with Vitali what he did with an equally slow Russian heavyweight Nicolay Valuev in their fight in 2009. Haye was able to out-box Valuev using speed and foot movement to keep from getting hit.

Haye said to the Guardian.co.uk “He [Vitali] has promised the world so many times that he could knock me out. That is rubbish. I’m too fast, too sexy and too talented to be blown away by a large, slow robot from Ukraine.”

Haye is still hoping to get Vitali to agree to a fight with him before Vitali retires and goes off into the sunset to a possible career in politics in Ukraine. Haye believes that Vitali is using the politics excuse an a foxhole to hide his head from Haye. Haye doesn’t see any other reason why Vitali would retire now with a huge money fight right at his fingertips, a fight that would bring Vitali more money than perhaps he’s ever made before in a single fight.

It’s hard to disagree with Haye about this being potentially a career high payday for Vitali if he’d agree to the fight. Vitali unfortunately was never able to get what you would call a huge payday fight against the likes of a prime Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield or even Riddick Bowe. Vitali did get a fight against Lennox Lewis, but that was before Vitali had established himself as a worldwide star. Had that fight come later in Vitali’s career, it would have been huge in terms of money for both Vitali and Lewis. Vitali’s other biggest fights have come against Tomasz Adamek, Corrie Sanders, Samuel Peter and Chris Byrd. None of those brought Vitali a lot of worldwide attention. The Adamek fight was considered a mismatch going in and that’s exactly what it turned out to be. The fight was obviously popular in Poland and Germany, but not in the United States or the UK.

It doesn’t make sense for Vitali to retire now without facing Haye. There’s too much money to be gotten for Vitali to walk away now. Plus, he’s said in the past that he wants to make an example of Haye for all the trash talking that he did about himself and his younger brother Wladimir Klitschko.

However, it could be that Vitali has started to get second thoughts about a fight with Haye after failing impress in a performance against Dereck Chisora in February. That was a very hard fight for the 41-year-old Vitali, and it showed his age pretty clearly. He’s gotten slower, less able to throw a lot of punches, and not as good as he once was at moving around the ring. To beat Haye, Vitali will have to be able to move constantly because Haye will be using his feet to look for angles to throw his bombs.