Haye ready for fight night

David Haye is relieved “the talking is over” as he edges ever closer to Saturday’s heavyweight unification scrap with Wladimir Klitschko.

The brash Briton is never short of a quote or two but even he has revealed his eagerness to stop talking and start fighting ahead of the clash with Klitschko in Hamburg.

The WBA champion and his rival, the IBF/WBO holder, met the media at Monday’s final press conference and will spend the remainder of the week quietly building towards their highly-anticipated showdown.

“I just want to get in there and get it on,” the 30-year-old said.

“The talking is over and it’s time.

“It makes a nice change in a way to have an early press conference because I don’t have that on my mind now. We’ve just got a public work-out to do, a couple more technical sessions and some choreographed stuff we’ve been training for.

“It’s about keeping it nice and sharp, tight, making sure I don’t get too lethargic over the next week.

“We’ll apply the final touches and do some fine-tuning and come fight night I will be exactly where I want to be.”

Haye is “enjoying” his role as the underdog for the fight.

His two biggest wins, against Jean Marc Mormeck for the cruiserweight world title in 2007 and Nikolay Valuev for the WBA heavyweight crown in 2009, took place on foreign soil against heavy betting favourites.

On Saturday in Hamburg he ventures into hostile territory again to face 35-year-old Klitschko and would not have it any other way.

“I’m enjoying that,” he said. “It means you get more credit afterwards.

“If I was heavy favourite then what is there to do? You beat him on points and people say ’you could have knocked him out’.

“This time around everyone thinks I’m going to lose and that’s great! But to the people who are writing me off – just make sure you give me my dues after the fight and don’t start saying ’Wladimir wasn’t all that, he’d been beaten before’, etc.

“Just say ’okay, we thought you were going to lose and you proved us wrong’.

“I haven’t got a problem if someone thinks Wladimir is going to beat me. I don’t take it personally – it’s just their opinion. Just make sure you give me credit after I beat him.”

It was always a toss-up whether Haye met Wladimir or his brother Vitali and the older sibling is “very jealous” to have missed out on the chance to punish the Englishman for his numerous slurs.

The older Klitschko, who holds the WBC title, said: “I am very jealous of my brother.

“I’m very upset because my brother took David Haye away from me. I want to fight him.

“If you asked me to fight David Haye after Wladimir (wins)...there’s no interest in it. There is no point fighting him.”