By Jake Donovan

Bracket season. It’s the time of year when almost everyone on this side of the Atlantic becomes a college basketball fan. From now through the first Monday in April, the NCAA will watch a field of 65 teams whittle down to a national championship through a simple process – win or go home.

In a sport where fans complain of too many champions roaming around in too many weight classes, you’d think boxing would be more receptive to the concept of regularly staging tournaments. One loss should not kill a career, but it should momentarily remove you from the mix, and allow the winners the right to face each other to prove to the fans once and for all who’s the man.

Not only does boxing refuse to embrace the idea of a playoff system, its power brokers often go out of their way to avoid staging meaningful events while other sports are in the process of crowning champions. Often is the case when the sport all but goes dark from mid-October until after Halloween to avoid competing with Major League Baseball playoffs, specifically the World Series.

This month is no exception.

HBO’s last telecast was March 7, with its next not coming until April 11, five days after the completion of the NCAA tournament. Showtime is slightly more ambitious, staging shows on March 28 and April 4.

Neither show will air opposite any portion of the tournament – the March 28 card is part of Showtime’s Shobox series, which means an 11PM (ET) start time. The April 4 edition of Showtime Championship Boxing airs at 10:45PM ET – nearly two hours later than its normal 9PM time slot to avoid getting slam dunked by the NCAA Final Four.

The scheduling makes perfect business sense, but speaks volumes of where boxing ranks on the food chain today. Sure, the idea is to maximize viewership, but you won’t catch other sports won’t alter their schedules on May 2 just because Ricky Hatton and Manny Pacquiao are fighting that evening.

Every once in a while, the sport gives back, and in places you don’t usually expect.

This weekend offers the latest example, when ESPN – not ESPN2, which has housed Friday Night Fights for the past decade, but the parent channel – gets back into the live boxing business. On a weekend when the NCAA tournament offers second round action, boxing goes big – not figuratively, but literally speaking.

For the first time since airing the terrific finale to Season 3 of The Contender, ESPN airs a live boxing telecast when Vitali Klitschko defends his alphabet title against mandatory challenger Juan Carlos Gomez (Saturday, 5PM ET, Stuttgart, Germany).

The fight will air while CBS offers continuous coverage of the round of 32. Not when they’re done for the day, not even during a break in between games. It goes head on, the way a true heavyweight fight was meant to be staged.

“Was” is the operative word in that last statement. Long gone are the days where the terms heavyweight and glamour division remain synonymous. The sport still relies on the old days to push a new product, but the truth is that there isn’t a heavyweight match in sight that can generate the level of sex appeal required to tear sports fans away from, say college basketball action this weekend.

On paper, this weekend isn’t any exception. Yes, Vitali Klitschko, all of one fight into his comeback after nearly four years away from the ring, is regarded as the second best heavyweight on the planet, with only baby brother Wladimir rated higher in most respectable rankings. Yes, former cruiserweight champion Juan Carlos represents a dangerous challenge.

But boxing has spent much of 2009 to date featuring mouth-watering match ups where determining a winner requires much greater effort than glancing at a bout sheet. Fans have been thoroughly entertained within the fraternity, and arenas are filling up with greater frequency than has been the case in recent years.

It doesn’t mean the sport, least of all the heavyweight division, is all the way back.

What we’re enjoying for the moment, is a starting point, something on which to build in efforts to restore mainstream glory in a sport than once only trailed baseball as America’s favorite.

The same could be said of this weekend’s fight in regards to the heavyweight division.

As long as the Klitschko brothers remain rated one and two in everybody’s rankings, boxing’s big boys will be without a definitive lineal champion. Wladimir is the highest rated due to his relative dominance and body of work in recent years, yet most believe that older brother Vitali beats him no fewer than nine times out of ten if they were to ever throw down for real.

The problem is, there’s no chance of that fight ever taking place. Both brothers long ago promised their mother that they’d retire before consider meeting in the ring. Therefore, the only plausible scenario to crowning a king would be for one Klitschko to lose and for the other to play brother’s keeper and avenge the loss.

The trick is to find a contender already rated high enough in most rankings to where a win would rightfully bolster him toward the top of the charts. Otherwise, Vitali’s 2004 knockout win over Corrie Sanders would’ve perfectly fit the bill.

Sanders went from unranked to top five on the strength of one win – a 2nd round knockout of Wladimir Klitschko in 2003. Vitali avenged the loss 13 months later, but efforts to crown him king was met with resistance by those looking for the Ukrainian to first avenge another loss –his 2000 injury-induced stoppage against Chris Byrd.

An upset this weekend would go a long way to better fitting the bill. Gomez can be found in the Top 10 of most rankings, including the number 10 spot at Boxingscene.com. A Cuban-born southpaw now based out Germany, Gomez (44-1-0-1 NC, 35KO) doesn’t boast a heavyweight résumé that jumps off of the page, but has remained steady throughout his 14-year career, which includes a stretch of nearly four years as the best cruiserweight on the planet.

His only loss came in August 2004, as a result of poor training habits and simply getting caught early. The fight was intended as a showcase, means to get him back into the mix after an 11-month hiatus away from the ring. Instead, he showed up out of shape for his Telefutura-televised co-feature against Yanqui Diaz, weighing in at what at the time was a career-heaviest 228 ½ lb.

Still, a fighter as polished as he should’ve been able to overcome a little extra flesh and still take care of business. Not the case on this particular evening, as he never made it out of the first round, getting caught with a right hand by Diaz then failing to protect himself from the ensuing barrage.

One bad night is the difference between Gomez possibly already reigning as a heavyweight titlist and perhaps as the division’s best, and the situation he’s presently in, which is put up or shut up time.

Lucky for Gomez, winning cures many things. His opponent this weekend can certainly attest to that.

For a three-year stretch, Vitali Klitschko became the butt of many a boxing joke. His stay atop the heavyweight division ranks very high among its most disgraced in boxing history. He garnered a world of support for his brave showing in a 6th round cuts-induced stoppage loss against Lennox Lewis in June 2003, but has since only managed four fights.

Two came in 2004, in knockout wins over Corrie Sanders and Danny Williams. But neither stood out very much once 2005 rolled around, a year that would see him repeatedly pull out of a mandatory defense against Hasim Rahman due to an assortment of injuries before finally calling it a career in November 2005.

Like many boxers, that old itch began to creep up on him. The one that tells a fighter he still has enough of the game left in him to make one last run. So again he tried to hobble back into a ring, attempting to enforce his “Champion Emeritus” status with one sanctioning body in efforts to solicit an immediate title shot against then-titlist Oleg Maskaev, even though Samuel Peter was next in line.

The mess was eventually sorted out, with Klitschko forced to settle for a stay busy fight, which was to come against Jameel McCline. The bout fell through after brittle Vitali once again suffered an injury in training camp.

He ultimately opted to sit out, and allow Peter the opportunity to knock Maskaev’s block off before challenging the Nigerian late last year. The question going into that fight was never who would win, but whether or not Klitschko would ever make it into the ring. So long as he avoided the injury bug, few doubted his chances of winning, even if a Peter win would’ve went a longer way toward clearing up the heavyweight clutter.

The fight played out exactly as expected – at least for those who expected Klitschko to survive training camp injury-free. Peter’s chances of winning ended the moment the opening bell sounded, with Klitschko dominating before forcing his squat opponent to quit on his stool after eight painfully one-sided rounds.

Klitschko’s return came two weeks after Gomez scored the most meaningful victory as a heavyweight, a convincing decision win over Vladimir Virchis last September. The win was his seventh straight since the Diaz debacle. It should’ve been eight, but a 2005 win over Oliver McCall was later rescinded after the southpaw tested positive for cocaine.

He’s since struggled to get his career back on track.  Three fights came in 2007, including a win for real over McCall, but the campaign was sandwiched by one-fight bids in 2006 and 2008. But the one fight in 2008 proved to be quality over quantity, with the win over Virchis making him the mandatory challenger for Vitali Klitschko’s title.

It was almost an opportunity lost, however, when network brass suggested he stand down and instead let Vitali first face David Haye. Gomez was having none of it, anxious to receive his shot after nearly a decade’s worth of heavyweight frustrations.

He would get his way, and is now one fight away from causing a major shakeup in the heavyweight division. On the other hand, a convincing – and entertaining – win over a top contender would go a long way in Vitali’s clause to possibly leapfrogging his younger brother for the top spot.

Whatever transpires, it’s a huge benefit to the sport that such a bout airs on a network that comes with your every day basic cable or satellite subscription. With the ability to appeal to a much wider audience than normal, boxing is given a great opportunity to serve as a bracket buster in more ways than one this weekend.

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.