Ducker David Haye is a joke at this point. I mean, how can you possibly take him seriously? He vigorously called out Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko for about the past two years with some of the most childish antics I've ever seen. The brothers have always been willing to fight him and have legitimately offered to fight him at least three times. (You know, it might even be more. I may have lost count.) Each time, Haye ran way, including just a couple of weeks before a fight with Wladimir that had already been scheduled. Even after Wladimir went on his own recent media campaign and returned fire at him, essentially daring and begging Haye to fight him, Haye punked again.
The most recent offer was for a fall fight against Wladimir. It was served to Haye on a silver platter with the deal he had asked for -- a 50-50 revenue split with Klitschko's K2 Promotions holding no future options. Haye tried to backtrack on the deal, saying he should keep the British television money for himself, Klitschko getting the German television money and the rest of the pot being divided evenly. But that's not 50-50. Putting all the money into the pot and then splitting it is 50-50. Apparently, Haye and his manager, Adam Booth, are worse at math than they are at making a deal.
So the brothers continue to clean out the division in dominant fashion. You can probably count on one hand the number of rounds they have lost in their last several fights combined, all of which have come against legitimate opponents, excluding Vitali's recent domination of Albert Sosnowski (who, unlike Haye, at least had the courage to get into the ring and fight his butt off as best as he could).
Wladimir will now move on to face Alexander Povetkin, his worthy mandatory challenger, and Vitali continues to pursue a fight with former titlist Nikolai Valuev. Haye has no fight lined up, although there is talk of a match with fellow Brit Audley Harrison, which will be a big deal in England. Everywhere else in the world, it would be about as interesting as a television test pattern.
Emanuel Steward, who trains Wladimir, described Haye perfectly to me recently when we talked about how he was outright ducking the brothers. Steward used the analogy of a little dog barking like crazy at a big dog. While the big dog might ignore the little dog for awhile, eventually the big dog will have had enough and turn its attention toward the little dog, which will cower or run for cover. Haye is the little doggie. All bark. No bite. Filled with hollow words, he's a laughingstock, at least on this side of the pond.
