Adam Booth Confident of Haye Victory Against Klitschko

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.