David Haye has nowhere to turn
Well they talked the talk but the walk was surely lacking.
Despite Wladimir Klitschko’s ominous warning on YouTube and threats to turn David Haye’s face into a pizza, and “The Hayemaker’s” selection of disparaging T-shirts, “Dr Steelhammer” has chosen Alexander Povetkin as his next opponent.
The current trend in boxing is clearly top fighters avoiding each other. It must be vogue for them to ignore one another and act like they don’t exist, which somehow enforces their own self-belief that there is no one out there who can challenge them. In fact rumour has it that Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather were at Miguel Cotto’s birthday party the other weekend and ruined a game of pass the parcel with their cold shouldering.
Clearly the fans don’t matter anymore, the competition of the sport doesn’t matter anymore and fighters don’t care about their legacies anymore. Oh no, wait, here comes Audley Harrison. Haye v Harrison - fantastic, that’s the world-championship bout we have been waiting for.
You have to wonder if it’s worth having all these belts flying around, because all it does is prevent the fights people want to see happening. One champion in one division would be the way forward; it’s not going to happen though.
The reasons are unclear why the Haye-Klitschko fight hasn’t happened. Did Haye wanted too big a split of the purse? The Klitschko’s are notorious in their stern contract negotiations, but perhaps The Hayemaker should have just relented this one time. All parties seemed keen so we have been denied by administration once more.
Haye has to realise that he is the new kid on the block. The Klitschkos have been round for a long time, regardless of the quality of the opponents that they have fought and so Haye needs to compromise if he wants to achieve his dream of unifying the division.
If they are demanding a 40-60 split or whatever, take it, beat them, and then demand the reverse for a rematch or the other brother. Right now it’s about proving that Haye is the best in the division and so he should settle for now and demand later.
It doesn’t look good after the collapse of their scheduled fight a year ago, which may have been due in part to the folding of Setanta Sports, who Haye was contracted to and thus wouldn’t have got paid much. It’s understandable that you would want maximum coin for challenging one of these Ukrainian juggernauts, but The Hayemaker needs to be more accommodating in his negotiations if he genuinely wants to unify the division.
Haye has the charisma, showmanship and style to really shake up this awful, turgid division that is the heavyweights, so it’s massively disappointing to see this sort of thing happening. Potentially he could be a global star, but in many people’s eyes he’s going to be seen as someone who ducks fights. Obviously it takes two to make a fight happen and perhaps the blame belongs with the Klitschkos, but as the new boy it’s the Londoner who will get the fingers pointed at him.
It’s a huge shame boxing is going like this what with the Mayweather and Pacquiao farce as well, all this bravado and no substance, it gets boring. As a sport it’s losing out quite a bit to MMA and these big fights capture people’s attention and bring back the casual fan. Instead we are left with one-sided matches.
To be fair Klitschko v Povetkin could be a decent bout for keen boxing fans. Poor old Povetkin, at least Haye wandered in and got a title shot relatively fast. Povetkin’s been waiting two whole years for it, he’s unbeaten and a worthy contender, but I think most people would rather see Haye fight.
With Vitali busy with Nicolay Valuev, it leaves Haye with basically a choice between Ruslan Chagaev, Evander Holyfield or Thomas Adamek. The only one of them worth watching would be Adamek but then you’ve basically got two cruiserweights fighting at heavy, which seems a bit wrong, but it would be an entertaining blend of styles.
It’ll be Harrison though. What a sorry state of affairs.
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