By Jake Donovan (photo by Pavel Terekhov)
Two heavyweight fighters. One heavyweight fight. At stake, the top prize in the sport’s most storied division.
Once upon a time, it wasn’t a matter of if the revolution would be televised, but who would ultimately become the highest bidder. Nobody in their right mind would turn a blind eye to a good heavyweight matchup, never mind one that will officially crown a king.
Alas, this is no longer your grandfather’s heavyweight division. It’s not even your older brother’s heavyweight division. His era just saw their champion – Lennox Lewis – inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame this past weekend.
Stateside boxing fans in this era are lucky (or unlucky, depending on your viewpoint) to even get a major heavyweight fight to grace their television screen. Exhibit A comes in the form of zero interest offered from major players HBO and Showtime to get involved in Saturday’s vacant lineal heavyweight title match between Wladimir Klitschko and Ruslan Chagaev.
Six years ago, Lewis was set to defend his crown against Kirk Johnson in an event slated for pay-per-view. The bout was no great shakes on paper – certainly not pay-per-view worthy on its own – but was to be paired with a Mike Tyson fight, with the intention to somehow drum up interest for a Lewis-Tyson rematch.
Eventually the card fell apart at the seams. Tyson withdrew from the show. Johnson was forced off with an injury, leaving Lewis without a fight and HBO without a PPV event.
Then along came the idea to match the Brit with Vitali Klitschko, already slated to appear on the undercard and next in line from an alphabet mandatory standpoint, but willing to step in the moment he was offered the opportunity.
Not only was HBO on board for the fight, but extra cash was thrown Lewis’ way in their greatest efforts to get him to agree. Once he did, the network willingly made room for the fight, shifting from PPV to their World Championship Boxing series.
Lewis barely escaped with victory, overcoming a deficit on the scorecards to slice up Klitschko’s eye bad enough to force an injury stoppage after six rounds. It would be the last time he would ever lace ‘em up for a prize fight, and the last time the lineal heavyweight crown was at stake.
This weekend changes that last part. The next era will officially begin, even if by accident. Klitschko was to face David Haye, in a fight that wouldn’t go any further in crowning a heavyweight king, but action-packed enough (on paper) to reignite the division.
Klitschko-Haye was scheduled to air on HBO this weekend. That was until Haye was forced off of the show due to a back injury (or so the press releases suggested). With upwards of 60,000 fans set to fill up Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, K2 Promotions frantically searched not just for any replacement, but a worthy enough opponent to convince the fans and all affiliated parties to remain in the fold.
One was found in Ruslan Chagaev, himself just a week removed from a cancelled planned rematch with Nikolai Valuev, also contacted by Klitschko’s handlers. Klitschko and Chagaev agreed to terms, allowing the promoters were able to keep the arena, the date and the crowd.
What they lost was the main ingredient – stateside coverage; more specifically, HBO’s money.
HBO was no longer interested in the fight, despite the historical implications attached to the revised headliner. They saw a Klitschko-Haye bout as a guaranteed action fight, and preferred to wait until Haye was medically cleared to reschedule, rather than exhaust what was left of their boxing budget on this particular matchup.
After years of airing any given Klitschko fight (nine straight appearances), HBO has now opted to weigh their options in what has become a buyer’s market all around. They practically dared the other networks to pick up the fight, announcing their intentions to jump back in the fold if Klitschko wins and agrees to a Haye fight later in the year.
The last part may have scared off other major players, namely Showtime, who has long grown tired of heavily investing in singular events, particularly when the winner’s next step is almost always heading towards HBO’s doors.
Whatever the case, the fight now lands on ESPN Classic. The last time they aired a major fight was when Wlad’s older brother, Vitali Klitschko defended his alphabet crown against Juan Carlos Gomez earlier this year.
Klitschko-Gomez was just another in a long line of recent fights between top 10 heavyweights to go largely ignored by stateside networks.
The Chagaev-Valuev rematch drummed up as much interest in the United States as did their first fight – zilch. Six months before losing his title to Chagaev, Valuev made his HBO debut in an alphabet defense against heavyweight retread Monte Barrett. It would be his first, last and only appearance on American airwaves until Integrated Sports agreed to pick up the feed via pay-per-view for his match with Evander Holyfield last December.
With this weekend’s appearance on ESPN Classic, Chagaev will have now graced an American television set for the fourth time, though you have to go back six years to recall the last time it occurred. Three straight showcases on Showtime’s Shobox series came in a span of just over a year from May 2002 to May 2003.
All Chagaev has done since then is: win 19 more times, including three over Top 10 heavyweights (Vladimir Virchis, John Ruiz, Nikolai Valuev, in a span of four fights), while remaining unbeaten (25-0, 17KO heading into this weekend); pick up a heavyweight trinket; and punch his way to a Top 3-5 boxing ranking in most circles.
But because he’s a modest punching southpaw who hails from Eastern Europe and has no American promotional affiliation, his career goes largely ignored.
A lack of stateside recognition has never been an issue for Klitschko, who has had HBO’s backing 17 times in his career, along with several other fights carried on ESPN and Showtime. His last nine fights have appeared on HBO, not all of them worthy of premium network airtime, but all with the network’s unapologetic blessings.
However, the buck literally stopped here, well short of being along for the ride in by far the most significant bout in the career of their heavyweight centerpiece.
When a fight is rejected by a network, the most common kneejerk reaction is to wonder aloud why one fight was accepted but a similar matchup is deemed unworthy. Such logic is flawed only because you’re questioning the very party for doing something you’ve demanded all along – developing standards.
What does warrant questioning is how the network could pass on the type of fight they’d have ordinarily raced to price out the rest of the industry in order to secure.
But given the response by the rest of the industry (or lack thereof) once this weekend’s fight was made available, it’s clear that HBO needn’t apologize for their actions. That a lineal heavyweight championship fight landed in the laps of ESPN Classic without entering a bidding war is as clear an indication as any that the sport is no longer run from within, but now dictated by a buyer’s market.
Jake Donovan is the managing editor of Boxingscene.com and an award-winning member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Contact Jake at JakeNDaBox@gmail.com .