By Brent Matteo Alderson
I was on my way to Vegas, I had the flight and the hotel booked, and one of my good friends was going to watch a fight live for the first time. I was excited. Then Vitali Klitchko injured his knee and the entire card was canceled. Now I don’t fault boxers that get injured in training. It’s part of the game and who knows maybe if Klitschko had fought injured and given a poor performance I’d be criticizing him for defrauding the public just like a lot of boxing writers ridiculed Buddy McGirt when he went ahead with his defense against Pernel Whitaker in March of 1993 despite having an injured shoulder which prevented him from throwing a left hook.
There’s also the other side of the coin too. Larry Holmes fought Ken Norton in 1978 with a torn left bicep and won a close decision in one of the greatest fights in history. I guess that’s the point though, Vitali Klitschko’s name shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same breath as Larry Holmes. You see the Easton Assassin was a true heavyweight champion, something that Vitali Klitschko wasn’t even though a recent column on Ring Magazine’s website compared his retirement to those of former champions Gene Tunney and Rocky Marciano. I don’t fault the magazine for initially recognizing Vitali as the heavyweight champion because his accession to the Magazine’s championship was brought on by a series of circumstances which enabled him to become the champion according to a set criteria that had been established in 2001 in an effort to improve the sport.
The alphabet organizations and multitude of so-called world champions are having a negative impact on the sport because there are so many of them today that the general public doesn’t even get a chance to become acquainted with a few of them because the multiple titles have diminished the significance of being a champion. This is detrimental to boxing because the popularity of all sports are predicated on the popularity of it’s stars as was the case when professional golf’s popularity grew with the emergence of Tiger Woods and the NBA flourished by marketing individuals such as Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan. Today the exposure and notoriety that boxing champions receive has been diminished to the point to where they have to fight in the anonymity of being one of four or five champions in one of the numerous weight classes.
In turn this is hurting the sport by making it hard for fighters to develop the popularity necessary to act as it’s ambassadors because boxing people don’t even know who all the champions are much less the average sports fan. Basically the existence of so many titlists has created a situation where the sport is almost void of any true superstars that transcend the sport and touch the general public.
So when Ring Magazine implemented it’s championship policy it was seen by most as a positive step in developing a system that would establish one world champion in each weight class so that being a world champion would mean something again, but not just to the boxing fraternity, but to the world. I don’t care what you say or think about Ring Magazine, there’s no denying that it’s an important part of boxing history. It’s older than the Heisman trophy and has been instrumental in promoting the sport and informing people about boxing for over 80 years. And during that time it has left an indelible mark as was the case when the Ring’s founder, Nat Fleischer, called Referee Jersey Joe Walcott over to ringside to inform the former champ that more than ten seconds had elapsed since Liston had been knocked down by Cassius Clay, which prompted Jersey Joe to immediately stop the fight.
In addition to being interwoven with historical developments, regular readers of the Ring know that Nigel Collins, the magazine's editor, is an honest man that is passionate about boxing and wants to improve our sport that has lost so much credibility and appeal during the course of the last 20 years. Due to these factors that I feel that their system for declaring a champion is probably the next best thing next to having a tournament box off in each weight category, which because of the current political landscape of the sport would be impossible to implement. The one problem that I have with the Ring championship is with their declaration of Vitali Klitschko as the legitimate Heavyweight Champion.
In a way it’s kind of kind of hypocritical for me to disagree with their classification of Vitali as a former Heavyweight champion because at first I half-heartedly agreed with it because I thought that Vitali was one the best heavyweight in the world in lieu of Lennox Lewis’s retirement. I also felt that Vitali’s claim to the vacant title was supported by historical precedent since the only two times in heavyweight history when the lineage of the title was broken it had been restored by men that had been closely associated with the final title reigns of the retired champions.
This was the case when Archie Moore who had lost to Marciano in the Rock’s last fight was afforded the opportunity to fight Floyd Patterson to fill the vacancy and it seemed like it was also going to be the case with Lewis’s retirement since Vitali Klitschko had given the champion a very tough challenge in his last fight. Although the circumstance was a little different, Jack Sharkey was also chosen to fight for the vacant title for having given a strong performance against Jack Dempsey in the Manausa Brawler’s last fight before challenging Tunney in the famous long count fight. So I supported the Ring’s anointment of Vitali Klitschko as champion even though I was conscious of the fact that he had lost to fellow titleholder, Chris Byrd.
The main reason that I supported his claim was because of his little brother Wladimir. You see Wladimir had finely won all the skeptics over; he was a huge young Gold medallist with a fluid style and had knocked out Ray Mercer, Jameel McCline, and Monte Barrett. He was the heir apparent, the next heavyweight great who had impressively beaten some top contenders unlike Michael Grant who had been prematurely designated as a for sure future champion. So after Corey Sanders surprisingly knocked out Wladimir, the win automatically qualified the South African as one of the top heavyweight contenders since he had beaten the legitimate number one contender. Thus when Vitali Klitchko who was one of the top three heavyweights in the world was matched against Corey Sanders in the Spring of 2004 I considered their fight as being for the genuine vacant world heavyweight title.
Problems quickly ensued and it seemed like Vitali’s claim to the title was diminishing on a daily basis before the year’s ends. Wladimir was starched by Lamon Brewster, which took a lot of prestige out of Sander’s win over Wlad. Instead of viewing Sanders as a fast southpaw with a strong punch, people started to view him as a pretty good middle-aged golfer who just happened to be the first one to expose the younger Klitschko. At the time, I was thinking, “Alright, maybe Corey Sanders really wasn’t one of the top five heavyweights in the world, but still Vitali is good and look what he did to Kirk Johnson, nobody has taken the Canadian out like that plus Don King is talking about a heavyweight tournament and Vitali will probably end up winning it.”
Then what do you know, Vitali Klitchko became one of the most inactive champions in history and refused to fight anybody in the top five and jumped on the chance to fight Danny Williams after his win over Tyson despite the fact that Williams wasn’t even one of the top two heavyweights in England much less the world.
And the situation just worsened by the minute. In 2005 Klitschko postponed two different bouts with Rahman citing medical reasons and then had the gull to ask the WBC for permission to fight in another voluntary defense before facing Rahman who was and is along with Toney and Brewster one of America’s top heavyweights. The WBC denied his request and the Klitschko-Rahman fight was scheduled. Hasim Rahman knew the score and had the feeling the entire time that the fight might not come off. “I’ll believe that I’m fighting Vitali Klitchko when he’s in the ring with me, until then I’m not sure, I don’t believe it, this man has done everything he could not to fight me.” The sad part is that Vitali Klitschko is one of the best heavyweights in the world and probably would have knocked Rahman out.
To label and treat Vitali Klitschko as a legitimate linear heavyweight champion of the world is ludicrous because his reign as the so-called successor to Lennox Lewis was a disgrace to the crown and to all the men that ever held what for almost 100 years was the most prestigious title in sports. Even though his anointment as champion met the specifications of the Ring’s championship policy, I really think that the process to declare a successor to Lennox Lewis should meat criteria that is more rigid than the one set for the other weight classes.
This isn’t for the Junior Welterweight or even Middleweight title; this is for the Heavyweight Championship of the world folks. This is where it all started. The Heavyweight champion isn’t just the best fighter in the heavyweight division, he supposed to be able to beat any other fighter in the world, he’s the so-called “baddest man on the planet,” but unfortunately Vitali has been anything but that.
Notes:
If you want to learn about how John L. Sullivan made the Heavyweight title click on my name and look at the article on Vitali Klitschko and the Heavyweight title.
The Mayweather fight was garbage and I turned the channel to an uncompetitive college football game. And the sad thing is that we have to endure a similar situation in December with Winky Wright. Come on HBO, no one else is going to pay these guys the amount of money that you pay them, make them fight some real fights or tell them to get lost.
Toney versus Rahman in February sounds interesting. I like Toney by decision if he comes in under 230 pounds.
20$ for the Hatton fight this Saturday, it sounds good to me.