Boxer vows "brutal execution" of WBO champ

(CBS/AP) The history of pre-fight trash talk in boxing is replete with colorful threats - often with cardiac references, occasionally veering toward cannibalism.

Who could forget when Mike Tyson addressed Lennox Lewis in a 1997 post-fight interview with this friendly taunt: "Lennox Lewis, I'm coming for you man. My style is impetuous. My defense is impregnable, and I'm just ferocious. I want your heart. I want to eat his children. Praise be to Allah!"

Then there was Ricardo Mayorga, who issued this precise warning to Oscar De La Hoya in 2006: "I want to stop his heart or detach his retina, one of the two."

Now, WBA champion David Haye has stepped into the ring of over-the-top threats. Five days before his heavyweight fight with Wladimir Klitschko, Haye had this to say at the podium: "You are going to see the most brutal execution of a boxer, I will absolutely destroy him."

Haye did not elaborate on how his mode of capital punishment would be administered in the ring but the target of his death threat had a couple zingers of his own at the press conference.

"You have a certain attitude that is not so good for your life inside and outside the ring," the Ukrainian IBF and WBO champion told Haye, before adding: "Be on time, princess."

Klitschko (55-3, 49 KOs) then promised to make Haye eat the T-shirt the Briton once wore depicting the image of himself holding the severed heads of the Klitschko brothers. (Vitali, the elder brother, is the WBC champion.)

The sparring continued, with Haye calling Klitschko a "robot" and Klitschko promising to punish Haye for 12 rounds before knocking him out toward the end of the bout.

We'll see if the highly anticipated fight in Hamburg's football stadium on Saturday is even half as entertaining as the pre-fight war of words.