By Jake Donovan

You’ve been there thousands of times. You’re in the comfort of your own home watching a fight, but reach a point when you wonder why what you see and what you hear aren’t quite one and the same.

The disparity in audio and video is baffling, to say the least. After all, a boxing broadcast’s team job from bell to bell is simply to put to words what is taking place in the ring.

What shouldn’t be listed in the job description is for said announcer(s) to grossly misinterpret what they are watching, confusing their own opinions for fact.

The latest example took place on what should’ve otherwise been an enjoyable Saturday afternoon of heavyweight boxing.

Vitali Klitschko was set to make the first defense of his heavyweight alphabet title, taking on mandatory challenger Juan Carlos Gomez. The bout, which took place in Stuttgart, Germany, was regarded by most going in as a fight between legitimate Top 10 heavyweights.

Yet if you listened long enough to ESPN boxing analyst and former trainer Teddy Atlas, what we instead saw was a sorry excuse for a heavyweight titlist against a challenger unfit to carry the spit bucket of champions and contenders of yore.

Rare was the moment throughout Saturday’s broadcast when Klitschko was given any credit for the work he put in, systematically breaking down Gomez before dropping him three times en route to a ninth round stoppage.

One of the many storylines left out of the broadcast was the fact that never in his 38-fight career has Klitschko ever trailed on the scorecards by night’s end. In fact, there have only been three occasions where the 37-year old has ever trailed on the scorecards in any point of a fight. All three occurrences were the result of losing the opening round – against Herbie Hide (1999), Corrie Sanders (2004) and Juan Carlos Gomez (2009).

Do the math – once every five years, Klitschko will happen to find himself down on the scorecards for the span of an entire round. By the end of the second round, the score will be tied, unless the fight ends before then, as was the case when he knocked out Hide early in the second to win his first major heavyweight title.

Rather than comment on Klitschko’s dominance over his opposition throughout his career, Atlas instead opted to open the broadcast by questioning whether his comeback performance against Samuel Peter last October was the real deal or an optical illusion.

It’s a legitimate question on the surface – Klitschko hadn’t fought in four years, yet looked like he hadn’t missed a beat in picking apart Peter before forcing the Nigerian to quit on his stool after eight brutally one-sided rounds. But the tone in which the question raised suggested that Atlas’ mind was already made up.

Further proof of this was his repeated reference to Vitali’s injury-induced stoppage loss to Chris Byrd – nine years ago. Klitschko was way up on the scorecards (winning 7 of 9 rounds on two cards and 8 of 9 on the other) before opting to succumb after nine rounds due to shoulder pain and an inability to lift his arm. It was later revealed that he suffered a torn rotator’s cuff, to which he would be forced to the sidelines for nearly eight months, the longest layoff of his career at the time.

Such an injury is enough to force most men to take time off from work, most of whom don’t have to worry about dodging punches for a living. But to this day, Klitschko remains unforgiven for not fighting three more rounds of a heavyweight fight with only one arm.

Retribution is offered in his brave showing in his short-notice challenge of the lineal heavyweight crown in 2003, outfighting Lennox Lewis for six rounds before a ringside physician determined a cut over his left eye far too severe to allow the fight to continue. But even that moment is often prefaced by the suggestion that Klitschko had no choice but to fight the way he did that evening, if he was to ever convince fans to move on from the Byrd fight.

Klitschko obliged that night and for a while enjoyed media momentum. But it’s clear that in 2009, when the world’s best two heavyweights are named Klitschko, all may be forgiven but not forgotten.

It certainly wasn’t forgotten on Saturday evening, at least not on ESPN’s airwaves (technically on ESPN Classic, but the same broadcast was carried an hour later on ESPN2). Brian Kenny, the evening’s lead announcer, to his credit tried his damnest to simply call the action in the ring and leave all of the politics out of the equation – in other words, doing his job.

Kenny did a solid job of relaying to the home audience what was taking place in the ring. However, he managed to follow the lead of oh so many other lead announcers in failing to rein in Teddy Atlas, who spent the entire night dismissing the credentials of Vitali Klitschko.

Rather than agree with the seemingly indisputable statement that you have to legitimately question who will beat either Klitschko brother, Atlas instead counters “Who’s out there?”, speaking down to the lack of talent in the heavyweight division these days.

Towards the end of the broadcast, moments after Klitschko dropped Gomez for the third and final time in the one-sided rout, Kenny offered his tag-team partner a chance at redemption.

“He was gone for nearly four years, and we speculated that maybe Sam Peter was just awful that night,” Kenny revealed before pressing Atlas for an honest answer to an open question. “But Gomez certainly came in here with a lot of spirit. So Teddy, you tell me - assess the level of performance of Vitali Klitschko, who is 37-years old.

“Well don’t forget, Gomez is 35..”

“There are some, but not ones you want to pay money to watch in the ring. You have to talk about the overall division, the landscape… is very, very favorable to heavyweights that have any talent at all.

“Klitschko is getting some of the (fave?) of that. You applaud him for that, you recognize that, but he was given guys in his last two fights that were perfectly set up for him to have a very good fight.”

Really? How many other fighters have ever looked good against Juan Carlos Gomez? One would be the answer offered by most, which would be the night Yanqui Diaz caught the worst available version of the former cruiserweight titlist, stopping him in the first round of their August 2002 Telefutura-televised bout.

That fluke aside, Gomez was long recognized as the premier cruiserweight of his day, and a difficult style to solve for any heavyweight today. At least that was the scouting report going into the Klitschko fight. Revisionist history instead sells another brand of the truth, much in the same fashion that Peter entered last year’s fight with Vitali regarded as the greatest threat to Wladimir’s stay at the top by those same people who eight rounds later would refer to him as an overrated punching bag.

Count Atlas among that group, as further evidenced by his post-fight exchange with Brian Kenny.

“What would impress you – who is out there that you would like to see him beat, besides his brother,

because he will not fight his brother,” Kenny asked Atlas, offering one last chance for Atlas to grow wise to the game and at least pretend to be objective before their evening ended.

“Honestly, the heavyweight division is wide open. I would love to see him fight (undefeated southpaw Ruslan) Chagaev, Alexander Povetkin -  any of the top fighters in the heavyweight division.”

Almost a respectable enough answer, though one that can be easily countered. Povetkin is presently the mandatory challenger to one of Wladimir Klitschko’s titles, and in line to fight the winner of the tentatively scheduled summer clash between Wlad and David Haye.

Meanwhile, Vitali has already called out Chagaev as well as Nikolai Valuev.

But then Teddy had to ruin it.

“Hey I can think of one fight that would interest me,” he chimed in.

“Really,” Kenny wondered aloud. “Who?”

“The Klitschko brothers,” Atlas responded, missing the part where they’d never fight each other.

Kenny laughed off the comment, perhaps the best way to handle your weekly dose of Teddy, before signing off for the evening.

“Well, it’s been our pleasure to serve you…” he commented. Unfortunately, there was little pleasure to be found for boxing fans once again subjected to Teddy Atlas, yet another in the long list of boxing announcers who fail to check in their ego and opinions at the door and simply perform the task for which they’re paid – to call the action as it happens, not the way they want things to be.

Jake Donovan is the Managing Editor of Boxingscene.com and a voting member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Please feel free to contact Jake at

JakeNDaBox@gmail.com

.