By Scott Gilfoid: After sitting out of the ring for three years, 34-year-old former two division world champion David Haye (26-2, 24 KOs) says he’s looking to get back inside the ring and defeat WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder and IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO champion Wladimir Klitschko to unify all the belts.
Haye believes he’s got the talent to accomplish this goal. He says he wants to come back and get big fights rather than facing the obscure guys. He obviously realizes that he’s going to need to work his way up to a title shot.
Haye will be turning 35 next month, so he doesn’t have a lot of time to mess around before he gets a shot at one of the titles. Haye says he didn’t much punishment in his career, and he’s obviously not taken any blows in the last three years while inactive.
“I want to regain the heavyweight championship, and unify all the titles. To do that I’ve got to beat Deontay Wilder and Wladimir Klitschko,” Haye said to the dailymail.co.uk.
I think Haye is kidding himself if he really thinks he can come back and unify all the titles at heavyweight. He’s a man in denial if he can’t see that he’s too old now and missed his chance by sitting on his backside for the last three years instead of fighting.
Just getting to the position where he can even get a title shot against one of those two heavyweight champions will take a decent amount of time for Haye. I don’t see Wladimir giving Haye a shot at his title unless he works his way back to the No.1 spot. In other words, Haye won’t get picked out by Wladimir in one of his voluntary defenses. That’s not going to happen.
I don’t think Wilder will bother fighting Haye either unless he beats some top fighters and gets a respectable ranking with the World Boxing Council. This isn’t charity. Wilder will likely make Haye earn the shot by beating some top contenders to show that he rates a title shot.
Haye isn’t going to get a crack at Wilder’s WBC title off the back of one fight against some obscure heavyweight from Latvia or Germany. Haye will need to beat some talents and pick up some decent scalps before he gets a title shot. The problem with that is Haye about to turn 35. My guess is by the time that Haye does work himself into the position to fight for a world title, he could be 38 or 39.
Some heavyweights age good, but I don’t know that Haye will be one of them. He lives and dies by his hand speed. If he doesn’t have that anymore due to his advanced age, he’s going to be in big trouble when he gets inside the ring with the better heavyweights in the division.
There’s also the question of whether his right shoulder is 100% following his shoulder injury two years ago. Haye has had shoulder surgery and has rehabbed the shoulder, but we still don’t know if he has full strength and flexibility with that arm. If not, then Haye will be a one-armed heavyweight in his mid-30s and with little in the way of size.
“Three years for me is not so much. I’m 34 years old, 35 soon but I haven’t got that much mileage and I haven’t taken many concussive blows,” Haye said. “In terms of boxing freshness I still feel like I’ve got a lot left to give.”
Three years is a long time to be out of the ring no matter what Haye says. Yeah, big heavyweights like Vitali Klitschko and George Foreman were able to come back and do well after being outside of the ring for a number of years, but those were big heavyweights, and not guys that came from the cruiserweight division like Haye.
It’s a different story when you’re 6’4″ or 6’7″ like Foreman and Vitali. Those guys had the built in size to dominate even when they came back after being out of the ring for years. At best, Haye is a 210 pound heavyweight who arguably should still be fighting in the cruiserweight division. He’s fighting in the wrong division against guy that are so much bigger than him that it’s not even funny.
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