By James Slater: People are still trying to work out exactly what happened this past Saturday night in Munich, Germany when British heavyweights Dereck Chisora and David Haye wound up bringing the sport of boxing into disrepute by brawling at the Vitali Klitschko-Chisora post-fight press conference.
While the main subject right now is seemingly just what the appropriate punishment should be for both the license-holding Chisora and the non-license-holding “retired” Haye, some people are asking, was the whole thing staged. Just why a skirmish between Haye and Chisora would be staged is anyone’s guess (the idea that the brawl was put on to hype a future ring meeting between the two Londoners has to be ignored seeing how Haye’s manager Adam Booth has said that his fighter has absolutely NO interest whatsoever in fighting Chisora) – but a new video, filmed from an angle that allows the viewer to see the main podium, has surfaced. And what is witnessed in this short video is sure to add further confusion to the whole ugly mess that went down five days ago..
We were told that WBC king Vitali was so “disgusted” with the actions of Haye that he almost instantly left the podium as the savage brawl erupted. Vitali and his brother Wladimir also said that both men brought the sport down and should be punished accordingly. However, the new video (at least I had never seen it before German promoter/manager Malte Muller-Michaelis kindly sent me a copy of the footage he himself obtained from a friend) shows Vitali acting like anything but a “disgusted” observer.
Check out the footage added to this article and you can clearly see Haye walk over to the podium, with Chisora still hollering “he glassed me!” and then shake hands with a smiling, apparently far from disgusted Vitali. Now, I’m not sure what this means, but nobody (at least to the knowledge of both Mr. Michaelis and myself) has written about this. Was Vitali happy with the actions of Haye (and Chisora)? Why else the handshake and the big grin just seconds after what has been called “one of the worst nights in boxing history?”
Haye, remember, is a man Vitali says “touched me personally” and Haye is a man Vitali wants very much to “punish and send to the dust (KO).” It sure doesn’t look like this in the newly acquired footage, does it?
Nobody is having a go at Vitali – or manager Bern Boente, who also smiles as Haye approaches the podium – and nobody is accusing either man of anything. But isn’t it strange that a man who told anyone who would listen that he was “disgusted” with the shameful actions of Haye and Chisora would, seconds after the brawl had ended, smile and shake hands with one half of the trouble-making duo?