by David P. Greisman
The everlasting allure of heavyweight boxing lies in the exercise of power. They are the biggest men and the hardest punchers. There is supposed to be danger in their delivery and excitement in their execution.
Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye were two of the three best heavyweights. Klitschko had become the true heavyweight champion, resurrecting his career after dramatic failures in grit and stamina, finding confidence through his superior skills, strategies and strength. Haye was seen as a legitimate challenger. He had a world title around his waist, speed and power in his punches, cockiness in his countenance and swagger in his step.
Klitschko’s fists had handed him 49 knockouts in 55 victories. Haye’s had brought him 23 early nights in his 25 wins. Their records promised pain. Their words did the same.
Haye had sought a clash with the Klitschkos – Wladimir and his brother, fellow heavyweight titleholder Vitali – from the moment he’d cast aside his cruiserweight championship and entered boxing’s marquee division. He’d even worn a shirt depicting him holding the decapitated heads of the brothers.
After years of talk, he was finally fighting Wladimir, whose style, Haye said, was ready made for him. It was he, Haye said, who would crack Klitschko’s questionable chin and leave him flattened and shattered. It would be over quickly, he said.
Klitschko felt disrespected – by the shirt, by the words, by Haye’s repeated refusal to shake hands – and he vowed to make Haye respect him. He promised to make Haye his 50th knockout. He questioned whether Haye would show up for the fight to back up his words. He asserted that it would be a night of extended punishment, ending only once he was ready to put Haye down and away.
Their fight should have been a power struggle between two big punchers with questionable chins. The winner, many thought, would be the first fighter to land a clean, hard shot.
The power struggle never developed. Instead, it devolved into a power outage.
The everlasting allure of heavyweight boxing lies in the exercise of power. Neither seemed willing to exercise his.
After all the threats, and despite the knockouts on their records, the fight lasted the entirety of its 12 scheduled rounds, a majority of the minutes lacking the inherent danger in delivery and excitement in execution.
In total, they landed but 65 power punches on the night. Broken down, that number becomes even more depressing. The biggest men, the heaviest hitters in the sport, averaged about five and a half power punches landed per round – combined. On average, each of those 36 minutes included less than two total landed power shots.
Haye threw 119 of them in those 12 rounds, about 10 per round. He landed just 36, three per round, one per minute. Klitschko threw 133 total power punches, about 11 per round, landing just 29, about two and a half per, or one every 74 seconds.
The most either ever landed in a single round was five.
Klitschko, as has been his norm, relied on his jab, a thudding left that helps maintain distance, softening his opponents up for the occasional left hook or right cross. He threw 376 on the night, more than 30 per round, more than 10 per minute. Haye’s movement minimized its damage – he shifted from side to side, dodging Klitschko’s probes and forcing him to reset, and even when the jab was on the mark, he’d often deftly pull his head back and make it miss by mere inches.
Klitschko landed just 105 jabs, but as his trainer, Emanuel Steward, had told interviewers before the fight, the punch did not need to land for it to have an impact.
Indeed, Haye concentrated more on minimizing Klitschko’s chances of a knockout than he did on maximizing his own. Each round, on average, saw him throw just two dozen punches. Sometimes they were overhand rights with exaggerated loops. Sometimes they were left hooks. Sometimes those two punches were put together in combination.
Haye did not blitz Klitschko, preferring to remain at a distance, seeking to counter Klitschko with faster return fire or to extend him and bring the chin lower. On occasion he burst forth with a single overhand right for which the follow-through included him ducking his head down and allowing himself to be off-balance on the inside.
Neither man had any interest in fighting in close. Klitschko was willing to direct a ducking man lower; Haye was willing to be pushed downward to the canvas.
“He fought the perfect game plan against someone who had my particular style,” Haye said afterward.
Klitschko is no lumbering giant. His height advantage is enhanced by good footwork that quickly pulls him out of range of attacks, and his hand speed and power keep foes at a distance – and on defense.
The total punches Haye landed – 72, split evenly between jabs and power shots – is actually less than what other Klitschko opponents were able to do.
Calvin Brock went 77 of 280 in seven rounds. Lamon Brewster, in his rematch with Klitschko, landed 70 of 248 in six rounds. Sultan Ibragimov went 97 of 316. Tony Thompson went 150 of 408 in 11 rounds. Samuel Peter, in his rematch with Klitschko, landed 100 of 440 in 12 rounds.
Not that Klitschko was an offensive dynamo himself.
“It was very hard to hit this man,” Klitschko said afterward. “He was definitely fast. He didn’t give me a lot of opportunities. He was very backed up and super cautious, so I couldn’t really land a good shot.”
Neither fighter was trying to dominate with his own offense. Each was more intent on trying to defend against that of his opponent.
It was incumbent on Haye to make the fight. For him, cautiousness meant falling behind on the scorecards. His strategy – and Klitschko’s defensive abilities – wasn’t giving him many opportunities. After the fight, Haye blamed a broken right toe, injured three weeks prior to the fight, for his not being able to be more aggressive.
Klitschko didn’t put Haye away, but the onus wasn’t on him to do so, not so long as he was winning, and not so long as Haye was still capable of harming him. With Klitschko’s jabbing not softening up Haye as it had done to other opponents, he settled for winning rounds clearly. Haye only landed in double digits in a round once. Klitschko did so eight times.
They are the biggest men and the hardest punchers. Because of that, even a bad heavyweight fight has the potential for danger, for a thrilling knockout to erase memories of the dullness that preceded it.
Not this time. In a fight between a champion nicknamed “Dr. Steelhammer” and a challenger who calls himself “the Hayemaker,” the continued potential for devastation meant that the only knockout scored was on those watching.
The 10 Count
1. Larry Merchant, speaking during Round 8 of Klitschko-Haye:
“He’s looking to land one punch … and win the heavyweight championship of the world? That’s it? That’s his whole plan? It ain’t a good plan. You can’t go into the ring trying to win the biggest title in sport trying to land one punch in 12 rounds.”
George Foreman, speaking during HBO’s “Legendary Nights” documentary recapping his stunning knockout of Michael Moorer:
“I had no intentions of throwing all of my power at him in the first, second and third round. My intentions were to extend him and to make certain that when I hit him with one shot he would not get up.”
Not quite equivalent, no, but amusing nonetheless.
2. Then again, Larry Merchant famously said this during Moorer-Foreman: “I think the myth of George’s power has been exposed by Michael Moorer so far.”
It happens to the best of us.
I don’t have to go too far back to find myself being spectacularly wrong. After the first two rounds of Sebastian Lujan vs. Mark Melligen on last week’s episode of ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights,” I tweeted this: “For all of Lujan trying to be a pressure fighter, I don’t see him having the style to break Melligen.”
Lujan, of course, broke Melligen down and won by ninth-round knockout.
3. Speaking of wrong, I think I was too hard on Beibut Shumenov last week.
Yes, I’m disappointed that the World Boxing Association 175-pound titleholder’s first two opponents of 2011 are the remnants of William Joppy (whom Shumenov beat in January) and Danny Santiago (whom Shumenov is facing in July).
And yes, I noted that Joppy was actually a late replacement after Juergen Braehmer dropped out of a unification bout with Shumenov. As for this July’s fight, I can see three notable names in the WBA’s light heavyweight rankings I’d absolutely want Shumenov to face: Gabriel Campillo (in a rubber match), Zsolt Erdei and Jean Pascal.
The problem is I came down on Shumenov without knowing anything about contractual offers and negotiations, reaching a kneejerk conclusion in which I assigned blame without having all the information.
4. It made sense when Jermain Taylor stepped away from the sport following his one-punch knockout loss to Arthur Abraham in October 2009. He’d lost four of his last five, three of those by way of knockout. The Abraham knockout, in particular, had left him with a “concussion, short-term memory loss and a small amount of bleeding on the brain,” according to Dan Rafael of ESPN.com.
It made sense to step away because Taylor had a pattern of getting knocked out against the upper tier of competition. It didn’t seem worth it to risk his health against other top fighters. It also didn’t seem worth it to settle for competing just against those at the lower tiers, to face lesser competition for smaller paychecks.
He never officially retired, however. And now he is coming back, possibly on Showtime on Aug. 13, per Rafael.
This is concerning.
It is concerning because Taylor, despite all of those losses, still has enough of a name that promoters would jump at offering money to have him as their opponent. Taylor’s plans are to return to middleweight, where he was once champion, and where now there are just a few fighters with name recognition in this country.
We don’t yet know whether Taylor’s skills and reflexes have deteriorated in the time off or whether the rest has instead rejuvenated him. He and his team might be confident, but we’ll be watching nervously.
5. K imbo S lice will finally be making his pro boxing debut, fighting off television in Oklahoma on Aug. 13.
If ever there would’ve been a perfect comeback opponent for Mike Tyson…
6. I’ve long noticed a trend in my years of compiling “Boxers Behaving Badly” – even if the person arrested only had one pro fight, or if he was an amateur who never went pro, he was referred to as a boxer.
A man who has played two games as an offensive lineman in the NFL might not get “former football player” within his news story. And yet we get newspaper reporters writing sentences like these:
“A professional boxer who worked at the Roy Jones Boxing Club in Pensacola was arrested Wednesday in Dothan, Ala., and charged with three felony counts of first-degree rape.”
That was in the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal. Larry White Jr. is 3-7 and last fought in 2009. That story is nevertheless understandable; White had been charged in past years with raping two very young girls, and readers deserve to know if someone like that is working within their community.
But then we got this from Canada’s Winnipeg Free Press: “He was an experienced boxer who wanted to test the toughness of a teenage boy he’d just met on the street.”
Bradley Elsliger had boxing experience, yes. But let’s not overplay the two pro fights Elsliger – he won once and lost once in 2007 – for the role he played in the fatal assault of that teenager.
7. Floyd Mayweather Jr. said last week he wants to have 10 more fights. Between tax issues and defending himself against criminal charges and civil lawsuits, it makes sense for him to throw himself into his work and bolster his bank account in the process.
The latest case was filed in late June. Here’s the quick info from the Associated Press: “A 21-year-old man claims boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. directed his bodyguards to attack him at a Las Vegas casino last year after the man asked about a long-awaited showdown with Manny Pacquiao.”
Take it for what you will that this is a civil lawsuit rather than a criminal case.
Here’s your quick primer on the many other reasons Mayweather’s lawyers have for going to court:
- Manny Pacquiao’s defamation lawsuit against Mayweather concerning Mayweather’s implications and allegations that Pacquiao has used performance enhancing drugs.
- A civil lawsuit against Mayweather and a bodyguard of his over an alleged assault at a Las Vegas nightclub in January. The plaintiff is a security guard at the club who claims he had asked Mayweather and people with him for identification when the bodyguard grabbed him and choked him, according to the Las Vegas Sun.
- Mayweather has been charged with misdemeanor harassment after allegedly threatening security guards at his housing development after they wrote up parking citations for some of his vehicles.
- He has a misdemeanor battery case in which he is accused of poking the face of a security guard who left parking tickets on one of his vehicles
- And he has several felony and misdemeanor charges against him for an incident in which he allegedly assaulted his ex-girlfriend and threatened their sons.
8. The metaphorical wisdom of… of… Victor Ortiz vs. Floyd Mayweather?!?
Wait, what?
Well, those of you who don’t have the same obsession of watching streaming webcasts of press conferences missed the bizarre intro video for Ortiz-Mayweather.
It was space-themed, starting off with a rocket lifting off into the air, transitioning to a space station topped with television screens featuring the fighters, and continuing with an extended metaphor that would make even Teddy Atlas proud.
“Space. Breathtaking. Mysterious. Source of the unknown. The imaginable and the unimaginable. There is so much we don’t know about the universe we live in. The planet Earth and its inhabitants are the only living creatures we are aware of. But as a species, the human race is oriented to change and the probability of endless possibility.
“In the sport of boxing, the brightest star is Floyd Mayweather. Floyd was a star from the moment he put on a pair of gloves, a world-class amateur, a medalist in the Olympics. He is today the pound-for-pound best fighter in the universe, boxing’s brightest star.
“His hands and feet move at the speed of light. He trains with heart and dedication, and his passion for excellence shows up in every performance in the ring. Always fighting the best, his most recent challenge, four-time world champion Shane Mosley, was dominated, and he rendered him inactive by his talent. Floyd’s most recent opponents, all world-class fighters, never stood a chance.
“In the galaxy and in the universe, boxing’s brightest undefeated star, the best fighter ever to lace up and compete, Floyd Mayweather stands alone as the shining star in boxing. But there is a supernova on the horizon, an exploding star that can outshine an entire galaxy.
“His name is ‘Vicious’ Victor Ortiz. [A voiceover from Max Kellerman: ‘Victor Ortiz is a fighter with star quality.’] Like a speeding comet that lays waste to everything in its path, this is a young, powerful fighter that could threaten boxing’s biggest star and render him ineffective.
“Victor Ortiz is a phenomenon, a supernova on the move in our boxing universe. His meteoric rise to become a world champion has been characterized by one thing: KO power, knocking out 22 of his last 33 opponents. Victor Ortiz has the skill and the youth to beat undefeated Floyd Mayweather.
“As a four-to-one underdog against Andre Berto, he dominated this undefeated champion in a world-class performance where at one time both men went down. He became the WBC welterweight champion of the world.
“The universe of boxing has long awaited a time where the sun and moon would align for boxing’s greatest star to battle with boxing’s newest star. This moment has arrived. [Voiceover from James Brown: ‘All the stars are out for this big-time bout here tonight.’]
“Will Floyd Mayweather continue to dominate with a stellar mix of speed, agility, power, and hit and don’t get hit defense, or will this young phenomenon become boxing’s newest and brightest star? It’s the question the galaxy will get the answer to on Saturday, Sept. 17. [Voiceover from Jim Lampley: ‘A night for superstars inside of the ring.’]
“Floyd Mayweather is undefeated. He is the star. Victor Ortiz has the power to change it all. […] Boxing’s brightest star vs. boxing’s newest star. Only one man can rule the universe. ‘Star Power,’ Mayweather-Ortiz, Saturday, Sept. 17, live on HBO pay-per-view.”
9. Not to be outdone, here’s the metaphorical wisdom of Teddy Atlas, as brought to you by Atlas’ fight plan for the main event of Mark Melligen vs. Sebastian Lujan on last week’s episode of “Friday Night Fights.”
Teddy visited a local Air Force base and its K-9 section, and so the puns that were to come were obvious – and painful.
“I think we’re going to have a dogfight tonight (two snarling military dogs come up and jump on Teddy and a dog trainer). […] Lujan’s a guy who’s always barking for a good fight, and Melligen, he’s never afraid to bite back. […]
“What you can do you’re Melligen is give him a little room, let him off his leash. Give him a little room to make a mistake, step back let him reach in, he drops his right hand, bang, left hand right there, put the collar on him. Well if you do that and you’re Melligen, well it’s going to be a howling good win.
“Now how does Lujan take a chunk out of Melligen? […] If you’re Lujan and you’re smart about it, you force him into that position with a throwaway punch, you put him into the doghouse . […] If you do that and you’re Lujan, well, you have a bow-wow win.”
10. Needless to say, listening to Teddy’s dog metaphors was, um… ruff.
David P. Greisman is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. His weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com.
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