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Holyfield ready to challenge Haye and Klitschko brothers

Evander Holyfield fought Lennox Lewis twice, drawing once and losing once © Getty Images

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Two-weight world champion Evander Holyfield has admitted he would relish a fight with Britain's David Haye and has urged the WBA heavyweight champion to give him a title shot.

The heavyweight legend, who will fight Sherman Williams in November at the age of 48, is refusing to call time on his illustrious career, preferring to turn his attentions to possible future bouts with Haye and one of the Klitschko brothers.

"I'm looking at both the Klitschko brothers and David Haye," he said. "I want to fight the people with the titles. I'm fighting this Williams guy because I need to stay active.

"I just can't wait to get to the guys with these three belts. So, whenever they are ready...the only thing that attracts them is that if they want a big pay-day, they have got to fight somebody that the people know. I'm still the most popular heavyweight that is fighting. It's obvious that if they felt I was an easy fight, they would go ahead and fight me. But they realise they don't want to get duked by the old man.

"But if they want to make money, I'm the guy they need to fight."

Following his loss to then-WBA champion Nikolai Valuev in 2008, Holyfield has re-established himself by beating veteran Frans Botha in April to pick up the largely uncelebrated WBF belt.

Should the five-time heavyweight champion of the world get past Williams in his next fight, a contest with WBC king Vitali Klitschko could be a distinct possibility.

"My people have talked with the older Klitschko brother [Vitali] and his manager but right now everybody's busy with fights," he said. "I've been doing this a long time, 38 years. I'm good at what I do. I realised each shot is not going to take anything away from me, that's the only reason I did it."

As for his motivation, Holyfield - who still believes he can break George Foreman's record as the oldest world heavyweight champion - is adamant he still has the hunger to succeed.

"With anything in life you lose something but you gain something," he said. "The most important thing is that you gain more than you lose. As for hunger, I don't do it for the reason I did it when I was a kid. I grew up poor and they told me I wasn't going to be anything, which was the fire in my belly because every time I fought somebody it was to prove them wrong.

"Now I don't have that, after everything I've accomplished. People say 'you're too old'. But what's the point of living if you can't set goals? It's not how you start, it's how you end.

"That goal I've set, I've got to keep pushing for it until I get it and hopefully before I hit 50 I'll do that. I fought George Foreman when I was 29 and he was 42. He said 'I'm not too old to have a dream'. Everybody laughed at him and when we fought, I did win the fight but he kind of won the people. After, he became the heavyweight champion of the world because he beat the guy who beat me [Michael Moorer]. He knocked him out!"

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