Haye Takes WBA Title from Valuev

Last December in Switzerland, Evander Holyfield - giving up nine inches and nearly 100 pounds - outworked WBA heavyweight champ Nicolay Valuev over 12 boring rounds only to have the judges award a majority decision to Valuev.

Last night in Germany, David Haye - giving up nine inches and nearly 100 pounds - outworked WBA heavyweight champ Nicolay Valuev over 12 boring rounds and was awarded a majority decision by the judges to take the title. Go figure.

This makes six consecutive 12 round fights for Valuev - only two of which ended with all three judges in agreement on who won the fight. This is not surprising as nearly every round Valuev fights is devoid of action and it's difficult to score a fight when neither fighter is doing anything. To Haye's credit, he did wobble Valuev slightly in the final round with a left uppercut. The scorecards read 116-112 twice and 114-114.

Next up for Haye is likely to be a mandatory defense against John Ruiz, who scored a seventh-round TKO over Adnan Serin on the undercard. The WBO belt will be on the line but every fight fan knows that any heavyweight bout not including a Klitschko is not really a title fight.

Elsewhere, light heavyweight Chad Dawson remained undefeated with a workmanlike twelve round unanimous decision over Glen Johnson. Johnson tried to apply pressure throughout but - unlike when they first met in 2008 - Dawson kept moving and never allowed the fight to become a crowd-pleasing brawl. Scores were 117-111 and 115-113 twice.