Emanuel Steward - heavyweight division is the weakest that I ever saw it

He also says Vitali's claim to fame is losing to Lewis and has done nothing to exceed it. Q: Vitali Klitschko retired for several years before he came back to reclaim a portion of the heavyweight title. Does Vitali Klitschko still have time to be remembered as one of the greats? A: I don’t think he’s going to enough time because even though he had his biggest claim to fame, and he tells me that and we laugh about it, he says, ‘The biggest thing that made me famous was losing to Lennox Lewis’, and he has still done nothing to really exceed that believe it or not still. It’s just a case of not having any fighters around for him to be the big name and the fact that he won’t be around long enough where you can say, well, he didn’t have any big name fighters but he had a reign for like five years or six years so you have to give some credit for that even though he fought a bunch of nobodies, but I don’t think he’s going to have that long of a career and that many big heavyweight championship fights to really reach that level. So I don’t think he’s in a good position to be considered a great yet, but who knows. He still may have a fight, you never know. He could end up with a high profile fight with David Haye possibly himself, or Nikolai Valuev with two of the biggest men ever. That would definitely be fights that would really be standouts in his career when people look back at him, but right now he would need about two more years to continue if he just dominated over these types of guys. Q: Emanuel, where do you think the fighter you’re currently training, Wladimir Klitschko, fits into this discussion of heavyweight greats? A: Right now, I think his last fight even though it wasn’t seen that much, is the first time that people are taking up notice that maybe we may have something special on our hands that we’re not really appreciating. I’m just reading what I see on these internet comments, and oh he’s been too cautious, he’s too this, he’s too that—but I think the public is starting to look at all of the knockouts, still, that he’s accumulating. So he’s right there still, just starting to get on the borderline where I’m just reading the fans that, the people have said maybe he is possibly going to be a great fighter because of his unbelievable one punch knockout power that you just don’t see from anyone, but right now he hasn’t arrived yet. There’s, unfortunately for him, no big super fights but if he continues this totally dominating run for I say two years, and the way it looks maybe three years, he’s going to be considered up there. You’ll see these printouts about what would Wladimir Klitschko have done with a George Foreman—he would have moved into that era of those types of conversations. A David Haye fight would throw him right into that mix of being considered if he had an impressive knockout over a David Haye or something like that. It would throw him into the mix where maybe being like, whoa, this guy with his size, and jab, and everything, and his punching power, and his left hand, right hand would put him where people will start at least thinking and say, ‘Well, can’t just say that any fighter of any era would have beat him because nobody is around in this era’, but he hasn’t had that signature fight yet and he may never get it, so I think the only thing he can do is just continue having a long run and if he runs off about ten or twelve more defenses, I think that will qualify him to be considered when they talk about possibly the top heavyweights in history, but right now he hasn’t arrived at that. He just is starting to get people to start thinking a little bit about the fact that he may be a little better than we give him credit for, just the fact that he’s still holding onto the title now after about almost two years or three years. Q: On a somewhat related note Emanuel, a lot of fans claim that the heavyweight division is weak right now. Can you recall any time in history where the division had a similar state and what do you think needs to be done in order for this to recover in the eyes of the fans? A: I think that the heavyweight division is the weakest that I ever saw it, that I can recall, I would put it this way, but if you look back at history it happens like this. I think it’s worse now because you don’t have anything coming from the amateurs. That’s what troubles me. It used to be weak, but you always had the George Foreman or even Klitschko. He is the last of the amateur program fighters from ’96. He’s the last product that came from the amateur system to the pros and that was what, about fourteen years ago now, and that’s what the problem is. There’s nothing coming from the amateur system, and I don’t see it worldwide, even these Cubans or whatever and the Russians. I don’t see much coming. I don’t see anything else coming up. It’s a weak heavyweight division and I don’t see anything too much coming up that’s going to make it any better in the future. But if you look back through history, Joe Louis had that era when he went on the “Bum of the Month Club” as they called it and he was fighting with ‘Two Ton’ Tony Galento, the bar tenders, and this and that. Then I remember when Tyson was the same way. Nobody was up there for Mike. He was at the time considered fighting Pinklon Thomas and them, but I still thought those were better fighters but the public thought he was that dominating, but that was still a tough era. They said the same with Lennox. Lennox was having a weak division, but I thought that was better still. You still had guys such as Shannon Briggs and good competitive guys out there. This is the weakest that I have ever seen it but it’s part of heavyweight history and that’s why we have these “Bum of the Month Clubs” and all that, and all of a sudden out of nowhere—somebody explodes on the scene. Right now, the biggest explosion has been David Haye and it’s nothing he did in the ring. Just verbally running his mouth he’s created a lot of excitement and a big buzz about himself. But it is weak, and I never saw it this weak and I hope that it will change but I just don’t even see it changing for maybe about another five years. http://www.********boxing.com/news.php?p=23586&more=1