by Dave Cacciatore: In the ballet made popular by the movie with Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, the established good girl ballerina (Portman) vies with a villainous dark newcomer (Kunis) for the role of swan queen in the upcoming ballet. David Haye must have seen this movie and taken it to heart because he used all of his feminine wiles in the lead up and fight with Wladimir Klitschko. Dancing and gyrating for 12 rounds he attacked with the fury of a 110 pound girl in spandex.
Any doubts about his strategy were answered early in the contest. David Haye made it clear with his running and flopping that he was there to maybe sneak away with the title if the circumstances were right. His ring cowardice only confirmed what critics said about him in the lead up to this fight, that he was ducking the Klitschkos all along.
Nothing that happened in the ring when he finally faced a Klitschko brother could lead you away from the conclusion that all of the protracted problems in making this fight were because of David Haye’s fear of getting hurt. What happened in that ring was proof positive that the contract problems, the mysterious injuries, the backing out on two occasions, were just self preservation. As was the last ditch effort to create dissension in the Klitschko camp by spreading a lie that Manny Steward told him that he would beat Wladimir and then he would help him train to fight Vitali. Because when David Haye finally got the World Champ in front of him, the man he said he would leave unconscious in the ring, the man who he paraded around with a t-shirt of his severed head, what did he do? He circled and back-peddled and did his best to avoid exchanges.
The most courage he could muster was to throw the occasional sucker punch in a vain attempt to catch Wladimir napping. On the occasions when he did manage to get close enough to hit Wladimir he instead chose to hit the floor on his knees. He looked to the referee constantly for support and was rewarded by being given a sympathy point for his acting. Unfortunately for David he took it too far, and referee Genaro Rodriguez fed up with his constant pleas took back the point by calling a clear push a knockdown for Klitschko later in the fight. For David Haye the plan was not stick and move, it was flip and flop. Flip on all of the pre-fight rhetoric of how you were going to harm this man, and flop on the canvas in a weak attempt to gain points or possibly win by a disqualification.
This from a man who droned on and on in the lead up to this fight how he was saving boxing from the Klitschkos. That the brothers from Kazakhstan were ruining the heavyweight division. How he was going to bring the titles back to Britain. However, instead his non-performance just provides great evidence that the heavyweight title is no longer the greatest prize in all of sports. David Haye did not even come close to fighting like he was ready to die to win the title. In fact, he did not even fight like he was ready to get a bloody nose to do it. His non-performance did more to ruin the title he pursued than anything the Klitschkos could have imagined doing. Where are the men in the heavyweight division? Where is Jerry Quarry with blood streaming down his face but refusing to back off from Muhammad Ali? Where is Joe Frazier who was willing to risk death to come out for the 15th round in the Thrilla in Manilla? Where is Buster Douglass pulling himself off the canvas to defy the odds and knockout Mike Tyson? Or Vitali Klitschko with his left eye almost hanging out his head but still wanting to beat Lennox Lewis’s brains out?
It may come as a shock to David Haye but the job of a champion is not to make your job easier. Wlad’s job is to fight his fight and that means to use his massive height and reach to his advantage. To fight tall and make his opponents eat jabs and straight right hands for territory. David Haye never made the fight he never tried to take the title by force from the champ. He brought the fury of a ballerinia with a busted pinky toe to a heavyweight title fight. His reluctance to cross the line drawn by Wladimir’s jab is proof that he is a bully only interested in fighting when he has all the advantages. The extreme caution he showed in both the Valuev and Wladimir Klitschko fights is in stark contrast to sadistic relish he has shown in dispensing with over-matched opponents. Big guys bring out the little girl in David Haye he runs and tries to use all of his cunning to beat them. This David is not anxious to prove that he is the king of the ring when his opponent is a Goliath.
And to be sure David Haye had the ability to fight Wladimir Klitschko. You saw it sporadically throughout the fight usually in the last ten seconds of rounds when he might try a wild flurry right before the bell. But these outbursts were only sprinkles of action by the challenger over the 12 rounds. And never a sustained attack designed to take the champion out. The six foot three inch, 213 pounds of ripped muscle contender, has fast hands and good skills. He was big enough, strong enough, and skilled enough to take Wladimir out. But in the end he did not have the courage of a soft spoken ballet dancer going for the lead role. It is time for David Haye to invest in a leotard and some new shoes because a heavyweight contender he has proven he is not.