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Wladimir Klitschko of Ukraine fights Sultan Ibragimov of Russia on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden to unify the heavyweight championship, or at least the shares that aren’t held by Oleg Maskaev, another Russian, and Ruslan Chagaev of Uzbekistan.
Wladimir Klitschko, far left, and Sultan Ibragimov will meet in a heavyweight title fight Saturday at Madison Square Garden.
Welcome to New York, Wlad (holder of the International Boxing Organization belt) and Sultan (World Boxing Organization), but we do have to ask: When, exactly, did boxing’s glamour division turn into the American marketing equivalent of Olympic weightlifting, or women’s tennis with unshaved legs?
“Impossible, who would ever have thought?” Emanuel Steward, the famed Detroit trainer, now the brains behind Klitschko, said contemplating how the decades-long stronghold of proud African-American warriors and cultural icons was metaphorically requisitioned by Ivan Drago, conqueror of the late, great Apollo Creed, if not Rocky himself.
“Times are changing, like this right here, something I never thought I’d see,” Steward said. He reached across the table for the front page of Wednesday’s New York Post, starring a beaming Barack *****, after another lopsided primary victory.
A quarter-century ago, before boxing became a prisoner of its own splintered, chaotic subculture, before the Soviet Union Communists went belly up, such a dramatic geopolitical shift affecting the heavyweight division might have filled stadiums across the United States for the inevitable challenges from the West.
But the sports landscape is nothing like it was in the days when most Americans believed that boxing had game. And as Ross Greenburg, the president of HBO Sports, lamented, the next great or even very good American heavyweight will have to appear “out of the woodwork” because “there’s a sense of an assembly line here to create great athletes for basketball and football, where size is a factor.”
Hence, HBO will broadcast the Klitschko-Ibragimov fight live, and hope to attract viewers by leading in with the premier of a documentary on the Brown Bomber, Joe Louis.
“There is a fan disconnect,” Greenburg said when asked about the Drago effect. “Unfortunately, Americans do rally around their own.”
These days, they may also go looking for some old-fashioned patriotic brawling inside those cages, or octagons, of ultimate fighting, the phenomenon that seems to have found a niche — at least that’s what I hear from people who know such things — as a cross between boxing and wrestling.
•
From outside the ring, or up on the American social mountaintop, shouldn’t any significant abandonment of a dangerous and inherently exploitive sport as a preferred way up the economic ladder by African-Americans or other impoverished ********** be seen as progress? Isn’t it much better to dream of being the big man in the White House, or at least on the proverbial Division I campus?
Steward, the boxing purist less interested in political correctness, doesn’t necessarily believe that heavyweight trends have been all a matter of choice, at least not from potential participants in the sweet science. Young athletes will follow the scent of money, he said, and there is little invested in boxing in the United States, in comparison with Eastern European amateur and Olympic development programs.
Agreeing with Steward was Boris Grinberg, Ibragimov’s manager, who said, “Boxing is not like tennis; it’s for poor people.” Reminded that Maria Sharapova was no golden-haired child of the country club, he pointed out that there are tennis sponsors aplenty once they locate the gifted and talented.
“Young boxers need the school to learn,” he said. “United States, they spend money for politicians, for *****. They spend money for war.”
Not for hand-to-hand combat, apparently. According to Steward, this has accelerated the pathway to the pros, corrupted learning curves and created a system that churns out fundamentally unsound American fighters. We’ve heard and made this case about basketball players, and witnessed the resulting international beatings at the hands of athletically inferior but better skilled and drilled teams.
Of course, America still underwrites and operates the world’s foremost celebrity mart, so perhaps heavyweight boxing is another reflection of a culture that has become more about consuming than creating, more about importing than developing. As Klitschko said when I asked him why this fight wasn’t being held in Kiev or Moscow or even in Germany, where he has fought most of his bouts: “I like to repeat the words of Frank Sinatra. ‘If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.’ ”
•
He is a strapping man, 6-feet-5 inches, who speaks carefully enunciated English, is known for political and charitable causes and whose brother, Vitali, was a World Boxing Council heavyweight champion.
Ibragimov, the opponent, is unbeaten in 23 pro fights with one draw, his last victory coming in Moscow last October against the ancient Evander Holyfield — another reminder of the sad state of the American heavyweight.
At first glance, he could almost pass for Russell Crowe playing James J. Braddock in “Cinderella Man.” And as far as Grinberg, Ibragimov’s manager, is concerned, Klitschko — “a walking machine” — may as well be Max Baer, compared with his man, who has worked diligently to become more of a boxing technician, the anti-Ivan Drago.
When selling one’s self in America, it is always a good idea to embrace style over an old Soviet stereotype.
Wladimir Klitschko, far left, and Sultan Ibragimov will meet in a heavyweight title fight Saturday at Madison Square Garden.
Welcome to New York, Wlad (holder of the International Boxing Organization belt) and Sultan (World Boxing Organization), but we do have to ask: When, exactly, did boxing’s glamour division turn into the American marketing equivalent of Olympic weightlifting, or women’s tennis with unshaved legs?
“Impossible, who would ever have thought?” Emanuel Steward, the famed Detroit trainer, now the brains behind Klitschko, said contemplating how the decades-long stronghold of proud African-American warriors and cultural icons was metaphorically requisitioned by Ivan Drago, conqueror of the late, great Apollo Creed, if not Rocky himself.
“Times are changing, like this right here, something I never thought I’d see,” Steward said. He reached across the table for the front page of Wednesday’s New York Post, starring a beaming Barack *****, after another lopsided primary victory.
A quarter-century ago, before boxing became a prisoner of its own splintered, chaotic subculture, before the Soviet Union Communists went belly up, such a dramatic geopolitical shift affecting the heavyweight division might have filled stadiums across the United States for the inevitable challenges from the West.
But the sports landscape is nothing like it was in the days when most Americans believed that boxing had game. And as Ross Greenburg, the president of HBO Sports, lamented, the next great or even very good American heavyweight will have to appear “out of the woodwork” because “there’s a sense of an assembly line here to create great athletes for basketball and football, where size is a factor.”
Hence, HBO will broadcast the Klitschko-Ibragimov fight live, and hope to attract viewers by leading in with the premier of a documentary on the Brown Bomber, Joe Louis.
“There is a fan disconnect,” Greenburg said when asked about the Drago effect. “Unfortunately, Americans do rally around their own.”
These days, they may also go looking for some old-fashioned patriotic brawling inside those cages, or octagons, of ultimate fighting, the phenomenon that seems to have found a niche — at least that’s what I hear from people who know such things — as a cross between boxing and wrestling.
•
From outside the ring, or up on the American social mountaintop, shouldn’t any significant abandonment of a dangerous and inherently exploitive sport as a preferred way up the economic ladder by African-Americans or other impoverished ********** be seen as progress? Isn’t it much better to dream of being the big man in the White House, or at least on the proverbial Division I campus?
Steward, the boxing purist less interested in political correctness, doesn’t necessarily believe that heavyweight trends have been all a matter of choice, at least not from potential participants in the sweet science. Young athletes will follow the scent of money, he said, and there is little invested in boxing in the United States, in comparison with Eastern European amateur and Olympic development programs.
Agreeing with Steward was Boris Grinberg, Ibragimov’s manager, who said, “Boxing is not like tennis; it’s for poor people.” Reminded that Maria Sharapova was no golden-haired child of the country club, he pointed out that there are tennis sponsors aplenty once they locate the gifted and talented.
“Young boxers need the school to learn,” he said. “United States, they spend money for politicians, for *****. They spend money for war.”
Not for hand-to-hand combat, apparently. According to Steward, this has accelerated the pathway to the pros, corrupted learning curves and created a system that churns out fundamentally unsound American fighters. We’ve heard and made this case about basketball players, and witnessed the resulting international beatings at the hands of athletically inferior but better skilled and drilled teams.
Of course, America still underwrites and operates the world’s foremost celebrity mart, so perhaps heavyweight boxing is another reflection of a culture that has become more about consuming than creating, more about importing than developing. As Klitschko said when I asked him why this fight wasn’t being held in Kiev or Moscow or even in Germany, where he has fought most of his bouts: “I like to repeat the words of Frank Sinatra. ‘If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.’ ”
•
He is a strapping man, 6-feet-5 inches, who speaks carefully enunciated English, is known for political and charitable causes and whose brother, Vitali, was a World Boxing Council heavyweight champion.
Ibragimov, the opponent, is unbeaten in 23 pro fights with one draw, his last victory coming in Moscow last October against the ancient Evander Holyfield — another reminder of the sad state of the American heavyweight.
At first glance, he could almost pass for Russell Crowe playing James J. Braddock in “Cinderella Man.” And as far as Grinberg, Ibragimov’s manager, is concerned, Klitschko — “a walking machine” — may as well be Max Baer, compared with his man, who has worked diligently to become more of a boxing technician, the anti-Ivan Drago.
When selling one’s self in America, it is always a good idea to embrace style over an old Soviet stereotype.
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