David Haye Believes Vitali Klitschko Will Avoid Him

David Haye tells Gareth A Davies of the Telegraph that he wants only to fight the Klitschko brothers, and that he's targeting Vitali for a 2012 fight. Vitali is coming off of a knockout win over Tomasz Adamek on September 10, and said immediately after the fight that he wanted to finish what brother Wladimir started in July.

But Haye doesn't think that Vitali will actually go through with it:

"Vitali said after the Adamek fight that he wanted to fight me now. But I think it’s all talk. He realised he was not going to get any headlines for knocking out Adamek, so he threw my name out there. For some reason I don’t really think he wants to do it. If they contact us, and talk to us and are serious about it, I’ll consult my team."

First off, Vitali Klitschko got plenty of headlines for stopping Adamek in a fight that was far better and more rewarding that Haye's loss to Wladimir Klitschko in July, and all of that goes to Adamek's credit, as the Polish fighter was underpowered and too small to really compete, but gave it twice the effort that Haye did with the younger brother.

If a Vitali vs Haye fight doesn't happen -- and it should, but I know some disagree -- it will be because Haye doesn't like the contract terms, and the Klitschko side won't bend far enough to get a deal done. That's really the only reason that the fight won't happen. That or Haye only wants to keep himself doing interviews, and doesn't actually want to fight at all.

There's more to the story, and I recommend reading it all, but I also wanted to note something that Richard Schaefer said. Schaefer claims that Golden Boy, which helps promote Haye, advised him to go after Vitali instead of Wladimir, feeling it was a better style matchup.

I also know some will disagree about this, but I've been saying the same thing for two years. When I see Vitali, I see a rugged, powerful guy who can still really fight, but he's more vulnerable than Wladimir these days. That's just my opinion. Vitali is older, he's creakier, and he's slower. He doesn't control with his jab the way that Wladimir does. Haye getting past Wlad's jab was always my biggest issue with seeing him being able to win that fight, and he couldn't do it. Vitali keeps his arms much lower, almost daring anyone to take a run at him, but nobody ever really does. Adamek tried to, but he was simply too short. Haye has some size on Adamek, and he's a quicker, more explosive fighter, too.

I'm not saying that I think David Haye will or would beat Vitlai Klitschko, just that I've thought since this whole media mess started a couple years back that Vitali was the brother he was more likely to beat. For all the talk of Wladimir's chin being suspect still, nobody ever gets to it. He's a straight up master at protecting his own chin. Vitali has the harder chin, but Haye hits with enough force that he can dent him, I'm certain of that.

So it's really more about whether or not Haye freezes up in the moment and doesn't actually take the risk, and it's a risk to go full blast at Vitali, who will be ready to throw back. If he lets loose, I think he's got a fair shot at blasting the old Vitali on the button and doing real damage. Whether or not he'd do it instead of standing and staring at him in another snoozefest is the question.