By Seth Green: Former cruiserweight champion David Haye (22-1, 21 KOs) was less than impressed with IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko’s 9th round stoppage over challenger Ruslan Chagaev on Saturday, saying, “Wladimir [is] the cure for insomnia. He couldn’t be more boring,” to Sky Sports. Haye had been set to fight Wladimir on June 20th, but David suddenly pulled out of the bout claiming that his back was too injured for him to make the fight. Haye wanted Wladimir to postpone the bout for three weeks, but Wladimir declined to wait around for Haye after David began mentioning needing more time than that.
Haye feels that many of the 60,000 tickets that were sold for Saturday’s bout were because of him. “Wladimir sold 65,000 tickets off the back of the fact he was going to fight me.”
Haye may be correct in part about that, because there were a great deal of boxing fans that wanted to see Wladimir fight him so that he could shut him up for his incessant trash talking. However, what Haye seems to be missing is that virtually all of Wladimir’s past fights in Germany of sold incredibly well and have led to the fights selling out.
Haye is hoping to fight Vitali Klitschko, the World Boxing Council heavyweight champion next if possible. For that matter, Haye is aware of Vitali now having a free date in September now that Vitali has won his arbitration hearing with the WBC, which allows Vitali to make an optional defense in September rather than to fight Oleg Maskaev, his mandatory for the WBC. Thus far, Vitali seems interested in wanting to fight Haye as well.
In the meantime, Wladimir said after his fight on Saturday that he still wants to fight Haye, but that he’ll have to “get in line.” Unfortunately, if Haye does go ahead and fight Vitali in September, there’s a high possibility that Haye will lose the fight which will all but eliminate the chance of a future Wladimir-Haye match-up for the time being. Haye, naturally, could work his way into an eventual title shot against Wladimir even if Vitali does blast Haye out, yet it would take some time for that to happen.
Haye has said that he plans on retiring by the age of 30. He would have to probably extend that a little unless Wladimir has no qualms about fighting Haye on the back of his loss to Vitali. There’s question marks whether Haye has the chin or the size to beat the other heavyweight contenders in the division like Alexander Dimitrenko, Alexander Povetkin, Chris Arreola or even Chagaev.
Haye looked very vulnerable at times in his last bout against 38-year-old Monte Barrett in November, and even though he stopped Barrett in the 5th, Haye didn’t impress all that much. His chin and his lack of size will no doubt be his limiting factors in the future. Unless his chin gets better in a hurry, Haye will probably never get a chance at fighting Wladimir.
The only way I see Haye getting a chance at Wladimir is if Haye focuses strictly on B level fighters after he loses to Vitali, and is rewarded by the ranking bodies pushing Haye upward without having to take on a top contender in the division. Knowing how boxing is, that very well could happen because there are so few big named heavyweights in the division right now, Haye would probably be pushed back up without fighting a sole.
Look at him now. Haye is currently ranked #2 in the WBO, despite only having a win over Monte Barrett and an obscure fighter by the name of Tomasz Bonin, neither of which I consider to be top 15 fighters.