Haye all bark, no bite -- ESPN

By Dan Rafael, ESPN.com

Your weekly random thoughts …

• Ducker David Haye is a joke at this point. I mean, how can you possibly take him seriously? He vigorously called out Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko for about the past two years with some of the most childish antics I've ever seen. The brothers have always been willing to fight him and have legitimately offered to fight him at least three times. (You know, it might even be more. I may have lost count.) Each time, Haye ran way, including just a couple of weeks before a fight with Wladimir that had already been scheduled. Even after Wladimir went on his own recent media campaign and returned fire at him, essentially daring and begging Haye to fight him, Haye punked again.

The most recent offer was for a fall fight against Wladimir. It was served to Haye on a silver platter with the deal he had asked for -- a 50-50 revenue split with Klitschko's K2 Promotions holding no future options. Haye tried to backtrack on the deal, saying he should keep the British television money for himself, Klitschko getting the German television money and the rest of the pot being divided evenly. But that's not 50-50. Putting all the money into the pot and then splitting it is 50-50. Apparently, Haye and his manager, Adam Booth, are worse at math than they are at making a deal.

So the brothers continue to clean out the division in dominant fashion. You can probably count on one hand the number of rounds they have lost in their last several fights combined, all of which have come against legitimate opponents, excluding Vitali's recent domination of Albert Sosnowski (who, unlike Haye, at least had the courage to get into the ring and fight his butt off as best as he could).

Wladimir will now move on to face Alexander Povetkin, his worthy mandatory challenger, and Vitali continues to pursue a fight with former titlist Nikolai Valuev. Haye has no fight lined up, although there is talk of a match with fellow Brit Audley Harrison, which will be a big deal in England. Everywhere else in the world, it would be about as interesting as a television test pattern.

Emanuel Steward, who trains Wladimir, described Haye perfectly to me recently when we talked about how he was outright ducking the brothers. Steward used the analogy of a little dog barking like crazy at a big dog. While the big dog might ignore the little dog for awhile, eventually the big dog will have had enough and turn its attention toward the little dog, which will cower or run for cover. Haye is the little doggie. All bark. No bite. Filled with hollow words, he's a laughingstock, at least on this side of the pond.

• My understanding is that although Showtime is interested in televising same-day taped coverage of Klitschko-Povetkin from Germany on Sept. 18 to pair with the possible Juan Manuel Lopez-Rafael Marquez featherweight title bout from Las Vegas, there is a problem. I'm told that Klitschko-Povetkin will likely be on Sept. 11 because the stadium K2 Promotions intends to put the fight on in won't be available on Sept. 18. K2 had been waiting on the release of the German soccer league schedules before it could finalize the date for the fight. If it lands on Sept. 11, Showtime, from what my sources tell me, can't accommodate the bout, which would probably push it to pay-per-view in the United States. HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg has already said he won't buy the fight.

• Here's my ideal road map to finding a universally recognized champion in the deep featherweight division, partly based on fights that are already made or are in the works.

The winner of Saturday's Lopez-Bernabe Concepcion fight meets Marquez on Sept. 18 in Las Vegas. The Lopez-Concepcion-Marquez winner then fights Chris John at the end of this year or in early 2011. The winner of the Sept. 11 Yuriorkis Gamboa-Elio Rojas fight faces Celestino Caballero at the end of the year or in early 2011. And the winner of the Lopez-Concepcion-Marquez-John "bracket" meets the winner of the Gamboa-Rojas-Caballero bracket next spring in a giant fight.

The winner will be the man at 126. One can dream, can't one?

• Now that Manny Pacquiao has been sworn into office as a congressman in the Philippines, I think his act should be to make a law that a fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. must happen in November.

• So the LeBron James saga will finally end Thursday night when he selects an NBA team to sign with. Now all we have to do is get the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico plugged and a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight signed and I will consider it a successful summer.

• Congratulations to Carl Froch on the birth of his first child, son Rocco, on July 1. With a newborn in the house, Froch will get a run for his money on who cries more -- the baby because he's hungry or Froch because he's still throwing tantrums about the close decision he lost in his Super Six fight with Mikkel Kessler and about how he doesn't want to fight his Group Stage 3 bout against Arthur Abraham in Germany.

• Promoter Lou DiBella mentioned an interesting fight to me that he wants to make with Top Rank. He'd like to match his fighter, Ronald Hearns, the son of Thomas Hearns, with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., the son of you know who. Chavez-Hearns? Has a pretty cool ring to it, don't ya think? And it would probably be an entertaining fight.

• Manager Cameron Dunkin is one of the best in the business when it comes to signing amateurs and bringing them pro success. He has done it with numerous fighters over the years, including the late Diego "Chico" Corrales, Kelly Pavlik and Steven Luevano to name a few. So when he called the other day excited about a young fighter he had just signed, I paid attention. He was bragging about Fairfield, Calif., featherweight Manuel "Tino" Avila, who turned 18 on July 4. Dunkin said although Avila, who he said ranked No. 6 in the world among juniors (amateurs under 19), did not have a ton of amateur fights (48-6 record), he loves his pro potential.

"Absolutely as talented as can be," Dunkin said. "I am just so excited. He can box, he can punch, he has a tremendous left hook. He's smart and slick and crack you."

Dunkin has not signed him with a promoter yet, but when he does, it will be interesting to follow him and see if Dunkin has found another top prospect.

• Happy belated birthday to Mike Tyson. The Iron One turned 44 on June 30.

• DVD pick of the week: Can you believe that, on July 11, it will have been one year since the violent death of Arturo Gatti? What better way to honor my all-time favorite fighter than by delving into the archive and watching the last great action fight in a career littered with them? I went back to June 6, 2003, when Gatti faced rival (and good pal) Micky Ward in the third fight of their legendary trilogy. To think that the fight could possibly live up to the incredible action of their first epic battle was probably pushing it. The second fight, which was very good, didn't come close. But the third fight, which Gatti won on a unanimous decision to win the trilogy 2-1, lived up to it. It was named fight of the year. Gatti injured his surgically repaired right hand in the fourth round and survived a knockdown in the sixth to win the slugfest at Atlantic City's Boardwalk Hall, which might as well be renamed "The House that Gatti Built." Ward said before the fight he would retire afterward, win or lose, and he did. Gatti fought seven more times, including winning a junior welterweight title in his next bout, but went just 4-3 before his retirement. Almost two years to the day after Gatti's final bout came his untimely death at age 37. He may be gone, but memories of fights such as this one will live forever.

Source: espn.go.com