Dan Rafael

pong · Jul 5, 2011

Wladimir Klitschko W12 David Haye
Heavyweight
Unifies three heavyweight titles
Scores: 118-108, 117-109, 116-110
Records: Klitschko (56-3, 49 KOs); Haye (25-2, 23 KOs)
Rafael's remark: As a cruiserweight, England's Haye, 30, was a legitimate champion. At heavyweight, he has been nothing more than an overrated, loudmouthed paper titleholder whose bark turned out to be all he had -- because there was no bite. After spending most of the past three years calling out Wladimir Klitschko and his older brother, fellow titleholder Vitali, insulting them at every turn and disrespecting them time and again, Haye finally got in the ring after twice pulling out on them. He had bailed on a signed fight with Wladimir in 2009, citing an injury nobody believed, and then later in the year agreed to fight Vitali but signed to fight Nikolai Valuev for his belt instead. Finally, however, Haye showed up in the ring to fight Wladimir in a much-anticipated bout, mostly because of Haye's outrageous boasts about how he was going to brutally destroy Klitschko and send him to the hospital.

Instead, he was a toothless tiger, who did nothing to remotely back up his talk. Klitschko, with three inches and 30 pounds on him -- not to mention being better than Haye in every aspect of boxing, with the exception perhaps being speed -- took him apart. He jabbed, threw left hooks and right hands and moved forward throughout the fight. But Haye, who accused Klitschko of being boring, ran away the entire fight and turned in one of the most awful big-fight performances in history. Before the bout, HBO's Larry Merchant nailed it when said of Haye, "He's blown the trumpet. Now, will he charge?" The answer was a resounding no. Haye was the boring one because he refused to engage. He seemed utterly petrified to taste Klitschko's tremendous power. He was defensive and rarely let his hands go, connecting on a pathetic 72 of an even more pathetic 290 punches (which means he threw an average of just 24 punches per round). Klitschko, meanwhile, stalked him and landed 134 of 509 blows, according to CompuBox statistics.

What Haye seemed to do more than punch was look for help from referee Geno Rodriguez and flop to the mat because of phantom pushes. After a few flops, Rodriguez bought the con job and docked a point from Klitschko for pushing Haye down in the seventh round. In the 11th round, with Haye already out of it on the scorecards, he flopped again. This time, Rodriguez was hip to Haye's act and ruled it a knockdown. It was one of the more inventive makeup calls from a referee you'll ever see.

Klitschko, 35, racked up round after round as he rolled to the lopsided decision, unifying three of the major belts and leaving no doubt that he is clearly the No. 1 heavyweight in the world. The only fighter even close is Vitali, and the brothers and best friends have, for obvious reasons, vowed never to fight each other. Complain about Klitschko's style all you want, but it's damn effective. There is nobody to even give him a challenge right now as he moved to 10-0 with eight knockouts during this, his second title reign. He is 17-2 with 14 knockouts overall in world title bouts and hasn't been in a remotely competitive fight since his first fight with Samuel Peter in 2005.

Haye's excuse for the putrid performance was a broken pinkie toe on his right foot that he supposedly suffered three weeks before the fight. The jokes to be made here are endless. But let's take Haye at his word and believe he really was injured. Still, to hear him blame his loss on a three-week-old small toe injury was laughable. Think about Arturo Gatti fighting through horrible cuts and busted hands. Think about Tomasz Adamek fighting a blood-soaked war with Paul Briggs despite having broken his nose a couple of weeks before the fight. The list of true warriors is endless. Haye simply got his butt whipped by a better, bigger, smarter, more talented fighter and had to have an alibi for his woeful performance. So he blamed it on the toe, which he eagerly showed off after the fight. (Frankly, it only looked a little swollen.) The toe excuse is destined to go down among the all-time best excuses in sports. Haye put himself in this position. He was in a (toe?) jam here because, had he pulled out because of the injury, he would have been a laughingstock for ducking the Klitschkos for a third time. So he went through with the fight, got routed and then made up excuses that made him a laughingstock anyway. All the while, the classy Klitschko, a native of Ukraine who has fought mostly in Germany, added yet another notch on his surefire first-ballot Hall of Fame résumé. Who's next?
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bet he was bashing his bishop while writing this

jonnytightlips · Jul 5, 2011

somebody said: ↑

The fat **** needs to be signed up on some shitty reality show where they make people who talk about sports professions live the life of one of the sports people they cover. Get the fat **** into the gym and getting into the shape of a boxer and see how much energy he has left to slide his fat stumpy fingers across his keyboard
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That is actually a great ****in idea.

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Dan Rafael

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