Adam Booth Confident of Haye Victory Against Klitschko
by Scott Christ on Jun 18, 2011 2:09 PM EDT
in Boxing News Analysis
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Trainer/manager Adam Booth is extremely confident that his man, David Haye, will get the job done on July 2 against Wladimir Klitschko, and in an interview with Terence Dooley, he gave some reasons why.
"I think [Wladimir] is passive-aggressive by nature. Wlad and the people who work for him are control freaks. I know David has got to him emotionally. That was always David’s plan."
... "With David, you have got a guy who has the confidence to go into a fight and use something he’s never used before. Look at the Mormeck fight. His first world title fight and David fought on the back foot in a way he’d never fought before. He fought the fight of his career up to that point. That ability to adapt makes David unpredictable. It is a big part of David Haye.
"The real skill of a fighter is to adapt what they do, make the other fella think about what you are going to do. That is half the battle in boxing, make the other man think about you. I have said it all along, David is wrong for Wlad in every sense, as a person and as a fighter, whether they stand there and have a verbal disagreement or a fistic disagreement."
Booth has in the past been criticized as more an associate of Haye's than true trainer, but it seems like even his greatest doubters are starting to give him some real credit after he devised the gameplan that led George Groves to a win over James DeGale on May 21. And the more you take him seriously, the more you can see there's a boxing brain in there, which his smugness (the man is smug, there's no getting around it) sometimes overwhelms. If you ignore his arrogance -- some of which is earned at this point -- he's got a lot to say and clearly takes his job very seriously.
And while he doesn't see why Emanuel Steward's work with Wladimir is so highly regarded, he does have a lot of respect for Klitschko, and knows very well that this is the fight of Haye's career. Booth giving Klitschko credit for his effectiveness, even if he sees it as basic stuff, is a nice contrast to his fighter's public stance, which is to give Klitschko zero respect.
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Disrespecting Wlad the wrong strategy
I give credit to Booth for a great game plan for Groves-Degale, but Wlad is at another level. You notice how nobody who’s been in the ring with Wlad since 2005 has had a negative thing to say about him after he beat them. The biggest misconception out there is that he’s “slow.” If he’s so slow, why is he able to knock solid fighters out cold (see Eddie Chambers) with a hook off his jab…
I’ve never gotten the idea that he’s slow either. He doesn’t bounce around the ring, but he’s steady and his hands are plenty quick.
Bad Left Hook
"To the town of Agua Fria rode a stranger one fine day..."
by Scott Christ on Jun 18, 2011 2:50 PM EDT up reply actions
For his size he is very athletic. The way he controls the distance and moves away from danger is pretty impressive foe a 250lb guy. Fast hands also ,made even faster because his puches ar so strieght. When a pretty quick and slick guy like Chris Byrd has to ask his corner what he got hit with you know he is not some big slow lump like Valuev or Austin.
Come on let’s get some perspective here. Adam Booth is getting all of the credit for being some kind of Svengali. He’s being praised for helping a slightly underrated young guy beat (just) an overrated young guy who he had already beaten long before he had ever met Adam Booth. You certainly don’t need to be some tactical genius to help a 6’3’’ heaveyweight step down to a very week division and beat up a string of for the most part much smaller weaker and older fighters and then beat the pittyfull bunch of heavyweights that he has so far. The whole team are completely overrated in my oppinion. And to quote Joe Louis “They all have a plan till they get hit”
Haye is a pretty bright guy
I have been saying that he’ll flatten Wlad for years now and I stand by it. Klit has a chance because he can punch, but he’s going to have a helluva time finding the target vs a guy who is always moving his feet, head and hands. I think Haye can smoulder the offense with lateral movement and feints… how in the hell is Wlad going to handle Haye’s??? He has no defense other than holding, right? Quite frankly, he’s not equipped to deal with the incoming of the much faster man.
The fight will feature virtually no action until Haye hits him, and the finishes the job. Probably within 3 rounds.
We’re conditioned to think Wlad has something secretly special going for him, but the fact of the matter is, the guys he fights are trash. A lot of short, slow, talentless, fat plodders. Most of whom couldn’t punch. He’s beaten them, and that’s cool, but there’s not a single quality fighter on his list. You could make a case for Byrd, but that’s about the best match-up a Klit could ask for. Past-prime tiny guy who can’t hurt anyone.
I always hear about how Wlad has more heavyweight fights, so he should win. Why does that make any sense? If Haye went out and smashed some of the no-hope bums… what does it change? Is he faster or stronger because of it?
The fact of the matter is NEITHER has fought someone like the man they’ll see across the ring July 2. I’ll take the better fighter.
He has no defense other than holding, right?
Well, that’s not exactly true, but it is his best defense. And it’s a hell of a thing to deal with, a big, strong guy like him who grabs and wrestles you every time you try to get in his wheelhouse. Or worse, jabs you and then grabs you, slowly bleeding your gas tank.
As for not fighting Valuev like Haye did, that’s all Valuev’s fault. Valuev is a tall slow, talentless, featherfisted guy who was really more of a Primo Carnera circus show then a fighter. When Haye dropped out of the first date, and Valeuv-Chagaev fell apart, Klitschko offered the fight to Valuev first… who he would have badly embarrassed and crushed. Valuev refused the biggest payday of his career on the grounds that he was “training to fight a southpaw.” So, Wlad fought that southpaw instead… even though he’d been “training to fight a righty”… lmao.
Anyway, if Haye fights Klitschko anything close to the way he fought Valuev, this is not going to be much. He’ll get worn down and kayoed late.
Bad Left Hook
"My God, kids today think that the laces are for tying up the gloves."
-- Fritzie Zivic
I agree. I’ll allow that Haye has a chance, but only because I’ve hardly seen him fight. And this assumes that he’s gotten significantly better since Valuev. Haye was no phenomenon in that fight. Klitschko is faster, harder hitting, and more skilled than Valuev.
If Haye hasn’t developed since Valuev, I think he has no chance.
I think it’s a mistake to assume Haye doesn’t see Klitschko as better than Valuev, and doesn’t plan to fight him differently.
Bad Left Hook
"To the town of Agua Fria rode a stranger one fine day..."
by Scott Christ on Jun 18, 2011 8:20 PM EDT up reply actions
I agree with you. I think what I was trying to say was that, given the David Against Goliath hype that led up to that fight, I presume that Haye did the best he could. He won, but not, IMHO, in a notable way.
Now, he has roughly similar situation in one respect, namely in terms of the size of Klitschko, but other than that, nothing is the same. So, I think he simply has to be a better fighter than he was before in order to win. My focus was not so much on strategy and awareness of the situation, and more on potential for development.
I will say again that I give him a chance, and I’ll be a tad more specific: I think Haye is very quick, and his athleticism allows him to do many things others fighters in his weight class could not. I don’t know anything about his power, because I haven’t seen any. He seems to think very quickly on his feet, and under pressure.
But I still say he has to be better than he has been, in order to beat Klitschko.
I do like some of Booth’s commentary in the interview. If the comments were really as off-the-cuff as they are presented, they show a bit of insight (although, I guess nothing really new either.)
I like the idea of attacking Wlad’s body in theory, but the only guy I’ve seen do it with even marginal success was 6’5", 82" Tony Thompson’s lead right hook, and he got sparked.
Bad Left Hook
"My God, kids today think that the laces are for tying up the gloves."
-- Fritzie Zivic
My fear is that even with Haye and his ability to hype this fight ….and he does have considerable talent in this department…the fight may ultimately be a bore, leaving the heavyweight division in even worse condition from a fan perspective.
Vlad is a deserved ruler of an otherwise barren division but his style leaves so much to be desired that I needn’t expound. So for me, it is up to Haye to make this fight. If he takes a safety first approach ( eg. Ray Leonard v Hearns in the first five rounds), not only will he lose, we all will.
Hey will have to take chances the way Leonard eventually did. And when he does, he better make good. Otherwise, he’ll become another notch in a Heavyweight Belt that is becoming less and less the gold standard for the baddest man on the planet.
"Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer"
---- Muhammed Ali
Actually there are quite a few interesting fights at heavyweight once the Klitschko’s retire (which can only be a few years away) Boytsov,Helenius,Povetkin,Adamek, a slimmed down and serious Arreola and people like David Price comming through. The fact that there are two freeks of nature at the top of the division paints a worse picture than it really is in my oppinion.
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