Boxing really is one of those sports where trash talk can be blown to pieces in the blink of an eye. Saturday night, David Haye’s continuous mouthing off went out with little more than a whimper as he was systematically taken apart by Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko in 12 rounds.
It was supposed to be the fight that rejuvenated a heavyweight division that hasn’t been the same since Lennox Lewis’ retirement. What took place showed just how hard the stranglehold held by the two brothers will be to break. That’s not to leave Haye without criticism.
The Londoner turned up in Hamburg with the hopes of a boxing friendly nation on his back and he simply didn’t perform. It might be true that he broke his little toe in the lead-up to the fight. Telling everyone after that you were injured smacks of being very schoolyard though.
The British fighter will likely point to every excuse in the book – the excuses wouldn’t even fill a small pamphlet though. Already his camp has been critical of the officiating and underhand tactics used by the winner’s camp. If he’d knocked the guy out like he said he would none of it would have happened.
Haye was planning to retire before his 31st birthday this October. You can’t imagine that a man with an ego the size of his will go out with anything but a bang. He must now hope that one of the Klitschko brothers decides they want to cause him some real damage. Otherwise, the former world champion has no chance of even getting near a ring in which one of them is standing.
With this bout out of the way there’s really only one other fight that now needs to take place and the negotiations are likely to be even more fraught for Pac-Man v Mayweather than they were for this fight. After that? Klitschko faces the winner in a street-fight.
