Sunday, July 3, 2011

Klitschko dominates Haye

The first round or two had some interesting moments and round twelve was entertaining, but the sandwich in between was pretty dull as Wladimir Klitschko added the WBA heavyweight belt to a stocked trophy case in a lopsided unanimous decision win over David Haye.

The only counted knockdown came in round 11 when Haye, who had been slipping/pushed to the canvas all fight had one counted as a knockdown.
On the rare occasions that Haye did engage, his looping right did find an occasional target and seemed to have stunned Klitschko in the final round, but the punch only emboldened the IBF champ as he opened up his offense and hit Haye with some quality shots.
Klitschko used his jab and stuck with it in a bout that was far from a classic but was not as awful as Jim Lampley and Larry Merchant of HBO seemed to think.
Merchant was in rare form in his role as a cranky curmudgeon and dropped a few lines that had Ryan and I laughing out loud.

The best part might have been a pre-fight video that looked to be right out of World War II-era complete with "Read all about it" paperboy and Vitali Klitschko along with George Foreman reading papers on a park bench with German subtitles.
Hilarious and add in Foreman rapping on Klitschko's dressing room door at fight time brought back memories of the WCW Goldberg entrance.

All and all, not a great bout, but some entertaining stuff and had a great time watching it with Ryan.






AFP PHOTO / JOHANNES EISELE

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