(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Scott Gilfoid: If former WBA heavyweight champion David Haye continues his boxing career at some point, American heavyweight talent Deontay Wilder is open to fighting him if he continues on. Right now it’s still unclear if Haye will return to the ring. He’d been flapping his gums about wanting to return in 2015 after spending an entire year rehabbing a torn up right shoulder.
The fact that Haye still isn’t fighting and has no fights scheduled suggests that his shoulder either isn’t 100 percent or he simply doesn’t have the desire to get inside the ring and test himself against the younger, bigger bruisers like Deontay.
“That’s going to be up to David,” Deontay said via Skysports.com. “That’s going to be how his body reacts. He only knows his own body himself. He knows how he feels with the injuries. If he does come back and cause some noise as a heavyweight, then that’s one more guy to entertain the division and bring it back. If he does come back, then welcome back and let’s go, baby.”
It would be a great fight between Haye and Deontay. I could see that bout potentially being pay-per-view in the United States. Of course, for that to happen, Haye would need to stay healthy enough to beat some credible heavyweight contenders in the division, but I’m not sure he can do that at his age.
The 34-year-old Haye has fallen apart in suffering injuries in training for Manuel Charr, and twice for Tyson Fury. All of those fights failed to take place due to Haye’s injuries. It’s quite possible that Haye might be too brittle to make it through any of his training camps in order to make it to a fight against a top contender.
What we saw in Haye’s loss to Wladimir Klitschko four years ago in 2011 is that Haye was simply too small to compete. The size and power advantage that Wladimir had made it impossible for Haye to do anything other than run from Wladimir all night long. If Wladimir had Haye looking like a guy too small to compete, you can bet that Deontay would do the same thing if he got him into the ring.
Haye needs to make up his mind whether he wants to fight again because when you see him flying to parts of the world in order to get sun and stay warm instead of train, it gives one the impression that he’s not mentally ready to continue fighting.
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