By Mark Vester
IBF heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko has a tough fight in front of him when he meets undefeated Calvin Brock on November 11 in New York's Madison Square Garden, but he already has set his sights set on the opponent he would love to fight next - the 7-foot-2, 320-pound WBA heavyweight champion Nikolai Valuev.
In a recent interview with Sports Illustrated, Klitschko revealed that he and Valuev both want to fight each other, but the fact that Don King is the co-promoter of Valuev makes it very difficult to put the fight together, because King will demand options to promote Klitschko's future fights if he beats his fighter. Klitschko has stated numerous times in the past that he will never give options to any promoter.
"The only thing that stands in the way (of him and Valuev fighting) is sports politics. I want to fight Valuev. Nikolai wants to fight me, too, but he has two promoters, and one of them is Don King. Which makes unification difficult to accomplish. Of course, unless I beat Brock, I have no chance to accomplish anything," Klitschko said.
Klitschko said that he does not see Brock as a problem, but he is no way is underestimating Brock's ability in the ring. He touched on the subject of why all four of the major world titles in the heavyweight divsion are currently around the waists of fighters from the former Soviet Union, which he feels is due to the current champions being properly moved along when they were young and staying hungry once they became pros.
"All four of us -- me, Nikolai Valuev, Sergei Liakhovich and Oleg Maskaev -- are from former Soviet republics. When we were growing up, you couldn't go professional -- it was against the law. I learned to fight in the Ukrainian amateur program, which is very strong. So strong that at the '96 Olympics in Atlanta, I won the super-heavyweight gold medal. Those other three boxers also learned to fight in the amateurs. They were hungry, they struggled, they fought hard to get to the top. All of them deserve respect."
