Toe to Toe With Klitschko

David Haye. The Hayemaker. Making hay while the sun shines (out of his arse if you believe the hype). Anyone who watched the Fight of the erm, Decade was it? - or did they manage to hype it up to an epoch this time? – can be certain that the braided braggart has reached the end of his line.

Before the Valuev fight you sensed that Haye’s main goal was to make sure he was remembered. And to that end he gobbed off like a schoolboy baiting a caged gorilla. Still he got in there and whittled away at the Russian cliff-face and got a result.

Not so cocky now, eh Dave?

This time there wasn’t even the slightest sign of him even chipping a nail on the Ukrainian’s chin... which would be fine if he hadn’t called Wladimir a ‘fucking dickhead’ and accused him of yabbering on and saying nothing – a remark which is unsurpassed in the history of exchanges between Mr. Pot and Mr. Kettle.

Now you might say Haye has pepped up a heavyweight division which is as devoid of character as a Steven Gerrard post-match interview. But he seems to leave all his showmanship in the pre-fight build-ups. In the fights themselves he’s just another journeyman heavyweight with a big right hand.

Lennox Lewis was apparently comparing Haye to Ali last week. And, laughably, in favourable terms. Clearly the Hayemaker is nowhere near Ali's class in the ring, so maybe Lennox – another somewhat uninteresting man from boxing’s recent history unless you dwell on the fact that he still lived with his mum in his 30s – was on about Haye’s audacious use of the English language.

Well even here I fear Muhammad Ali is slightly ahead on points. On Saturday night Haye appeared to float like a bee and sting like a butterfly.

Maybe I’m being too hard on Haye – perhaps you have to give him grudging respect for fashioning himself some mighty paychecks from a bit of talent and a lot of bluster.

Nevertheless the broken toe excuse doesn’t wash. I’m sure there are pain-killing injections to help with that – and surely getting belted in the face by a 6 foot 8 inch Cossack is going to distract you from a crack in your phalanges.

The point is that Haye offers this as an excuse after the fight. I mean what was he hoping to do, kick his ass? If it hampered him so much then he should’ve withdrawn but that would’ve denied a handsome purse. And the pinky pain hardly stopped him from dodging a Klitschko KO from round 4 onwards, did it?

I’m not saying he’s Dis-Audley Harrison, but if that was the Fight of the Decade then I suggest we take down all the boxing rings in Europe and go back to a bit of honest to goodness cock-fighting ‘til 2021.

In the meantime Wimbledon drew to a close with yours truly getting it right and wrong. I tipped Kvitova to win the ladies and she didn’t let me down. Not that I want to watch two strapping lasses from a Nazi Youth propaganda poster knocking nine bells out of each other too often.

At least we were saved from Azarenka v Sharapova which would’ve been a festival of grunting post-Soviet grunting the like of which hasn’t been heard since the outlawing of the Stalingrad Sow Slaughtering Championships in the early nineties.

Kvitova saved her whelps for the odd celebration of a winning point. Not that you expect someone of her dimensions to emit a noise that sounded like she’d sat on a hamster.



The men’s final had better moments in it, and was a refreshing change. Djokovic is an extraordinary player. He doesn’t seem to possess the most dangerous of weapons: he doesn’t have Nadal’s whiplash forehand (and I bet you wouldn’t want to come up against Rafa in a post-shower towel-flicking contest) or that fluent Fed backhand. The serve’s not terrifying either.

But he doesn’t have any weaknesses either, not least in his body which appears to be more flexible than a Nick Clegg policy commitment. And he covers the court to such an extent that even the Rafa was reduced to clumping it over the baseline in despair.

I liked the celebration, too – eating the grass was a nice touch. I think he’s going to have to smoke some before our Andy Murray can get anywhere near him.

That’s not to say that Murray’s crap. He’s very, very good. It’s just that Nadal’s a blinking animal. But Djokovic has proved what needs to be done to beat him and Jesus it looks like hard bloody work. Let’s hope the Scot is up to it.

Old Rafa is disarmingly nice, isn’t he? On court he looks for all the world like a Spanish Popeye, narrowing his eye and bulging his biceps. Off the court he’s a pussycat which is in fact the diametric opposite of David Haye’s performance in Hamburg on Saturday.

I’m off to see a bit of one-day cricket on Wednesday and I’m hoping and praying that Jonathan Trott isn’t batting at number three. The lad doesn’t do one-day innings. He likes to spread ‘em out over two or three. Why the feck are they picking him?

Meanwhile a Latin American model has promised to strip if Paraguay win the Copa America. Given I listened to a BBC 5Live broadcast that listed the reasons why England’s national team is shite (too many foreigners, club v country, media pressure, being a bit too tired, schoolboy centre-halves just hoofing it, being generally a bit crap, etc.) maybe it’s time that Capello resorted to these more alternative incentives.

That's a mobile phone in her cleavage by the way. Wonder if it's on vibrate.

Frankly the lass in question, a Senorita Larissa Riquelme, leaves not too much to the imagination, but it must be worth sounding out Rachel Riley just in case.