By Jake Donovan
Win or go home – it’s the driving force behind the NCAA basketball tournament, arguably the greatest postseason platform of any sport.
The beauty of the tournament is that even when your own bracket is busted, you can still kick back and watch the rest of the action, knowing that a national champion will be crowned in the end.
Unfortunately, the same is not always true in boxing, which is why tournaments – even those of the one-off knockout variety – at the pro level don’t quite catch on, despite constant fan request for such a process.
Later this year, the heavyweight division will undergo an unofficial Final Four of sorts. In theory, you couldn’t ask for a better series.
It’s been years since boxing’s big boys have enjoyed any sort of relevance in the sport, a far fall from grace after serving for more than a century as the sport’s glamour division. So anything heavyweight-related that produces positive feedback has to be a good thing.
However, there stands to reason that the series winds up providing short-term entertainment without a payoff in the long run.
Why? For the same reason such little attention is paid to anything heavyweight-related – it’s a two horse race unless retirement or a major upset enters the picture.
Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko will never face one another in the ring, and few see them losing anytime soon – even though their next respective fights will come against the next two best heavyweights in the world, David Haye and Tomasz Adamek.
Ask any objective fight fan of their thoughts on the heavyweight division and they will quickly respond that there are the Klitschkos and then there’s everyone else.
Once upon a time, there was Mike Tyson and then everyone else but the Klitschkos are no Iron Mike when it comes to generating excitement in or out of the ring.
It can be argued that Wladimir isn’t completely unlike the last lineal champ before him, Lennox Lewis. They share the same trainer – Emanuel Steward – and enjoy the same level of dominance over the heavyweight field.
The biggest difference, however, is that Lewis was afforded the opportunity to clean out the division (or come close enough to it to prove his superiority) before officially retiring in 2004.
The younger Klitschko continues to dominate anyone put in front of him, at least since his first fight with Samuel Peter. The hulking Ukrainian has only lost a handful of rounds in that period of more than five years, spanning ten fights against mostly legitimate Top 10 competition.
There shouldn’t be any question that he’s the best heavyweight on the planet and in a perfect world, his summer showdown with Britian’s brash alphabet titlist David Haye would be a battle of champion versus top challenger.
However, in this world, Wladimir continues to contend with whispers that he might not even be the best heavyweight in his own family.
Older brother Vitali has been on a tear ever since returning to the ring more than two years ago. His forcing Samuel Peter to quit on his stool after eight rounds in his first fight in nearly four years served notice to the rest of the division that when healthy, he’s quite possibly the toughest out in the world.
Six more wins have followed, none featuring even a shred of competitiveness. Carlos Gomez couldn’t take more than a single round in their March 2009 fight, one that began a Fighter of the Year-level campaign for Vitali, including back-to-back 0-snatching wins over Chris Arreola and Kevin Johnson.
Last year was a far cry from what he accomplished in 2009, as wins over retreads Albert Sosnowski and Shannon Briggs doing little to strengthen any claim for his being the world’s best heavyweight.
It was supposed to be a different story this year, though his lone fight of the year didn’t even make it out of the first round.
Odlanier Solis was supposed to represent his quickest opponent to date, or at least since Chris Byrd more than a decade ago.
However, the Cuban failed to go three minutes in their fight this past March, landing the wrong way on his leg after trying to steady himself from a combination that wobbled him seconds prior. The injury resulted in the end of the fight, leaving viewers disappointed, though not necessarily surprised.
With word coming out that the Klitschko standing in the opposite corner against Haye will in fact be Wladimir, process of elimination leaves Vitali to face former light heavyweight and cruiserweight champion Tomasz Adamek later this year.
Some will argue Adamek’s heavyweight credentials and lofty ranking. His biggest win in the division to date came last year in his decision win over Arreola. Of his five fights at heavyweight thus far, Arreola to date has represented Adamek’s lone scrap against a Top 10 opponent, a status the Californian no longer enjoys.
That dynamic won’t change after next weekend, when the transplanted Pole fights Kevin McBride in familiar settings at the Prudential Center in Newark, minutes from his adopted hometown of Jersey City, New Jersey.
Adamek has built quite a following in Brick City, drawing impressive crowds in each of his six fights at the venue, including his cruiserweight title win over Steve Cunningham more than two years ago.
But he hasn’t forgotten his Polish roots, nor have his countrymen fallen out of love any with him. His October ’09 battle with Andrew Golota was the biggest fight in the history of Polish boxing and – assuming he gets by McBride next weekend – talks have his showdown with Klitschko taking place in a newly built soccer stadium in Poland.
Between the four fighters, any mix and match would make for a huge event seemingly anywhere in Europe, but especially in Germany, Poland and England. Both matchups should produce massive attendance numbers, which in theory would mean a matching of the winners – and even the losers – could rival some of the biggest events in the history of any sport in terms of crowd participation.
That’s if there’s a matching of the winners.
Therein lies the concern that such a series only produces short-term satisfaction. Boxing fans should embrace the news of the Klitschkos facing Haye and Adamek in their next fights later this year.
However, they also need to brace for the reality that the Klitschko brothers come out as the winners of each fight, and perhaps with considerable room to spare.
Haye and Adamek are both quality fighters and proven former cruiserweight champions (in fact, the last two lineal champs at that weight) before moving up, but enjoy lofty heavyweight rankings almost by default.
Take away Arreola, and Adamek’s entire heavyweight campaign has been one giant tune-up. Haye is more proven, though not by very much. His title win over Nikolai Valuev looks far better on his resume than the fight did in reality, and wins over Monte Barrett and Audley Harrison provided next to nothing in regards to enhancing his credentials.
The Brit did gain points, though, with his dominating showing a year ago against former champ John Ruiz, dropping the former repeat titlist four times before forcing a stoppage in the ninth round.
Despite his unsubstantiated trash talk and lofty opinion of himself serving as a turnoff with most of the public, what can’t be denied is Haye’s power and overall talent.
In fact, given the strengths that he and Haye bring to the table, it stands to reason that the matchups provide each with their greatest chance of pulling off an upset. Public opinion suggests that Haye doesn’t stand much of a chance of toppling Vitali, and even fewer are confident that Adamek could bump Wladimir from the division’s top spot or even put up a competitive fight.
Though just a theory and with little to no evidence to support it, the suggestion seems to be that Vitali can be outboxed, while not even Wladimir’s level of dominance over the past five-plus years removes the fact that he doesn’t take the greatest shot.
It will only take for one of those working theories to give the division what it has so badly craved for years – a truly mouth-watering event that captures the world’s attention. Just one Klitschko loss provides a platform for a fight between winners in which the final man standing would boast an indisputable claim as the best heavyweight in the world.
After all, that’s what tournaments are all about. Stage a series of matches, with the overall winner being hailed as its champion.
Yet it’s a conclusion that would never come about if the Klitschko brothers continue to keep winning.
None of this is to say that they are bad for the division – in fact, given their ability and the manner in which each carries himself, the sport couldn’t ask for a greater pair of ambassadors.
But what the sport needs to brace for is the possibility that what on paper appears to be a fantastic Final Four is actually “just” two great heavyweight fights, and not necessarily means to an end.
Jake Donovan is the Managing Editor of Boxingscene.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at twitter.com/JakeNDaBox or submit questions/comments to JakeNDaBox@gmail.com .
