Fighters say it all the time but I do suspect that the hand injury was legit, he hit valuev in I think the second round on the forhead, valuev's head didn't move, bone is harder than concrete, at the time I was thinking more along the lines of "how is haye going to hurt valuev (which he did, once he managed to get a shot around valuev's guard that wasn't deflected by his shoulders) if he can't get the leverage to move his head" but with hind site that alone was very likely to damage his hand, which would explain the lack of output.

Other than not being as active as he would of probably liked himself I don't think Haye can be faulted too much.