By Cliff Rold
It used to be the grandest prize in all of sport. One day, it might be again. The right fighter, the right style, and the stature of boxing’s Heavyweight champion of the world can always come back from the dead. The sport needs to have a Heavyweight champion of the world again first.
This Saturday marks the best opportunity for the vacant throne to be filled since the retirement of Lennox Lewis on February 6, 2004.
At over five years and change, it is by years the longest vacancy ever atop the Heavyweight division. While there have occasionally been split titles and varying claimants, it’s never taken this long for one single man to emerge as “The Man.” Mega-money showdowns featuring Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao, Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton in the time between has once again disproven the idea that a strong Heavyweight division is a need, but there is no doubting mainstream attention would be consistently easier to find were there a true king of the jungle to point to.
It is the one division, more than any other, which needs one true champion. If there are four (or fourteen) champions at Strawweight it’s silly, but does it really matter in the grand scheme? At Heavyweight, it does. While always a bit of myth, a Heavyweight champion is supposed to be the one man who can take all others. The sport has been missing that element.
Alas, this best opportunity is not necessarily the perfect one.
IBF/WBO titlist Wladimir Klitschko (52-3, 46 KO) is recognized by most as the leading figure in the class and has rested in what can be called the number one contender spot since knocking off Sam Peter and Chris Byrd in succession in 2006 and 07. The winner of ten in a row, including wins for both of the alphabelts he holds, Klitschko shoots for eleven straight with arguably the best foe of his latest run.
WBA(?) titlist Ruslan Chagaev (25-0-1, 17 KO) has been the best possible foe for Klitschko for the last couple of years but hasn’t made it easy to recognize. Illness and injury have limited his ring appearances since an impressive run from 2006-07 which featured wins over an undefeated Vladimir Virchis, former WBA titlist John Ruiz, and the title victory over a Nicolay Valuev being moved towards a potentially showy run at Rocky Marciano’s 49-0. While many American press fawned over Peter as the number two to Klitschko, it was Chagaev who was racking up the better wins.
Peter of course has been removed as a factor and therein lies the imperfection of this weekend’s showdown. Last October, Vitali Klitschko (37-2, 36 KO) returned from an over three year retirement and walked through the Nigerian puncher. He then notched an impressive victory over former Cruiserweight titlist Juan Carlos Gomez earlier this year. When he left the game in 2005, he was regarded as the consensus best in class and looks so far as if he hasn’t lost a beat.
The impressions he made against Peter and Gomez, combined with Chagaev’s relative inactivity and pedestrian showings in two bouts after Valuev, allowed him to step back into most ratings as the number two Heavyweight if not 1A to his little brother.
Ring Magazine has elected to recognize the winner of Wladimir Klitschko-Ruslan Chagaev as the new champion in class, a 1 vs. 3 matchup rather than 1 vs. 2. Should everyone else?
After all, in the one other chance Ring had to anoint a post-Lewis successor, they got it wrong. Vitali Klitschko earned praise for a dramatic showing against Lewis in 2003, losing on a brutal cut but pushing the champion to the wall. He certainly appeared to be of championship caliber. The problem was, he lost the fight and didn’t have much of a resume to speak of beyond the loss. From 2000-03, Vitali had faced only one serious top ten contender, Chris Byrd, and lost. Yes, it was on an injured shoulder, but it was still a loss. And yet, with those credentials, and a follow-up win over a beached whale that once resembled the respectable Kirk Johnson, Vitali was slid into the number one contender’s spot by Ring ahead of men like Byrd and, begrudgingly, John Ruiz, both of whom had faced and beaten better opposition than Klitschko.
It was a call which could only be called predictive because it certainly didn’t smack of merit. When he opened his 2004 campaign against the man who’d temporarily railroaded the express which was Wladimir, Corrie Sanders, Ring had a 1-3 clash and elected to crown a champion.
Few others followed suit. It wasn’t that Vitali wasn’t the right guy; it was simply that it needed proving still. It needed to be earned. Injuries led to retirement and the chance never came.
This time should be different.
If Wladimir wins, he will have done everything he could to clean out the division because, rightly, he won’t be fighting kin. If Chagaev wins, it’s murkier water but also an easy road to a revenge of the brother scenario versus Vitali. Either way, we should have a Heavyweight champion beyond dispute before 2009 closes with this Saturday as the catalyst.
It’s not perfect. It’s good enough though and history says good enough is usually the best which can be hoped for. Even with the issue cleared up, it still might not be enough to restore the title’s full luster.
The Heavyweight championship, the real one, has been vacated by six men since the beginning of the gloved era. Three of those men, Jim Jeffries, Joe Louis, and Muhammad Ali (twice), eventually returned to lose, ultimately maintaining the lineage of the division through Jack Johnson, Ezzard Charles, Joe Frazier and Larry Holmes.
The others left it for time to figure out. The title was dormant from 1928-30 following the retirement of Gene Tunney. A series of fights culminated in a disqualification victory for Max Schmeling over Jack Sharkey. It was an ignominious start but the line would hold until the retirement of Rocky Marciano in 1956. Marciano’s claim was filled almost immediately when Light Heavyweight king Archie Moore, Marciano’s final victim, was matched with 1952 U.S. Olympic Gold Medalist Floyd Patterson later that year.
In all of the cases, lineage eventually claimed directly or not, the immediate successors to the throne faced problems of legitimacy. Jeffries was initially succeeded through a bout between Jack Root and Marvin Hart and few cared. It took Johnson to make it count again. In the cases of Schmeling and Patterson, the shoes proved too big but they laid the groundwork for accepted champions in Louis and Sonny Liston.
A pattern can be observed. When a titan of the ring departs on boxing’s most storied division, the process of a new champion requires a stabilizing force before a new star force can emerge. That’s what this weekend can finally begin.
While both are big stars in pockets of Europe, the Klitschko’s have been around far too long for anyone to think they will ever emerge as the globally recognized mega-stars Heavyweight boxing has previously yielded. Chagaev doesn’t regularly supply the style to catch on in the U.S. even if he should get past both of the Ukrainian brothers.
It doesn’t matter. The emergent force will harness the legitimacy which can be passed to the man the public universally wants. And, for now and finally, the blinking eye sore reading vacancy above the Heavyweight division, can be switched off.
The Weekly Ledger
But wait, there’s more…
Calderon-Mayol: https://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=20423
Cotto-Clottey at MSG: https://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=20446
Pacquiao’s Welterweight Questions: https://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=20467
Picks of the Week: https://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=20448
Cliff’s Notes…
The question mark next to Chagaev’s WBA is simple. He’s recognized as titlist but was champion in recess and might be fully stripped soon and…who knows? Thus the “?”...I read in Lyle Fitzsimmon’s excellent piece earlier this week here at BoxingScene that I was sitting in front of him at the Garden. I wish I would have known; I think he’s the dude I kept shouting over…Also, if missed, check out Jake Donovan’s early look at Dawson-Johnson II; then recall Bernard Hopkins just passed the three year anniversary of the last time he actually posted a win over a Light Heavyweight…Add in Hopkins might not fight at all in 2009 and Jake’s right. Check it out…So is it a new Transformers movie or a new Megan Fox movie? Or is that like asking for a choice between cold beers on a hot day?...Don’t forget the fight of the week on Friday night on Versus. Adrian Diaconu-Jean Pascal is a real fights fans fight. More on why it deserves eyes later this week.
Cliff Rold is a member of the Ring Magazine Ratings Advisory Panel and the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com