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By Kevin Iole, Yahoo! Sports
There’s no doubt that when he’s healthy, Vitali Klitschko is the world’s finest active heavyweight.
The problem over the past four years is that John McCain’s 96-year-old mother, Roberta, has been more active than the erstwhile heavyweight king.
It’s laughable that handlers of Hasim Rahman mounted a campaign three years ago insinuating that somehow Klitschko was afraid of Rahman. If Klitschko truly was afraid, the only thing he could possibly have been afraid of was getting locked up for beating Rahman so badly in their ill-fated WBC title bout.
If Klitschko is healthy on Oct. 11, Sam Peter’s head will bounce off the canvas at The O2 World Arena in Berlin, Germany, as if some Globetrotters star was using it for a dribbling exhibition.
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Klitschko is healthy now, supposedly.
But it’s 10 days before Klitschko, who was given a free lifetime pass called the WBC heavyweight championship emeritus when he retired three years ago after injuries wouldn’t let him defend the title against Rahman, meets Peter on Oct. 11 in Berlin.
Who knows whether he’ll make it to the post when they’re supposed to fight for the WBC belt in a bout televised nationally in the U.S. on Showtime?
He pulled out of his scheduled November 2005 title defense against Rahman in Las Vegas inside of 10 days, so it’s not like the worst is behind the fight’s promoters.
Even making it to the ring is no guarantee that he’ll give the fans who purchased tickets and those who sit down in front of their television sets what they came to see. The first time he needs to twist awkwardly to avoid the haymakers that Peter throws about 30 times a round will tell a lot.
If Klitschko can walk without a limp, that will be a good sign.
Klitschko, of course, insists he’s fine, but one political candidate or another insisted the fundamentals of the economy are sound a few days before the market collapse, so who knows what to believe any more.
“I know my body well, better than some doctor,” Klitschko said last week on a conference call with reporters. “I feel great. I spend every day in the training gym and after that I go to the doctor. The doctor gave me a medication test and I got the green light from him. My coach gave me a training test, and I had an excellent result. I don’t think about problems. I feel great and I (am) looking forward.”
As good as Klitschko was when he was fighting – and, despite the many naysayers, he was plenty good – he’s now 37 and he hasn’t fought since Dec. 11, 2004.
As great as John Elway once was, would you want him coming back to quarterback your team now, at 48 and after 10 years away?
I didn’t think so.
But Klitschko is back and no one who knows him well knows for sure what to expect. It’s impossible to predict how his body is going to react when he’s hit by a man as powerful and as menacing as Peter when the most stressful thing he’s done over the last four years before this training camp was to run for mayor of Kiev, Ukraine.
OK, I get it. Politics are a dirty, nasty, cutthroat business and probably one of the few businesses on Earth dirtier, nastier and more cutthroat than boxing, but it’s a rare occasion when a political campaign tears the cartilage in your knees or causes the disks in your back to rub together.
You can win an election with a bulging disk, but I’m pretty sure you can’t win a heavyweight championship with one.
Klitschko would have been wise to have stayed retired, because after compiling a 35-2 record with 34 knockouts, there is little else for him to prove. His only two losses came to Chris Byrd, when he had to quit on his stool after dominating the fight because of a torn rotator cuff, and to Lennox Lewis because of a cut the size of a hockey puck around his eye in a fight in which he was doing extremely well.
Other than those two bouts, he won every fight he was in, all but one by knockout.
He’s fighting because his younger brother, Wladimir, now holds the IBF and WBO belts, and he says the brothers always dreamed of being champions at the same time together.
The WBC was forced to give him an immediate title shot because it, in a bid to make him go away in late 2005 after he had pulled out of his title defense with Rahman, named him its champion emeritus.
It promised him that should he ever return, he would get an immediate crack at the title. The WBC’s thinking at the time was that it wanted a title fight (and the sanction fee that brought) and Klitschko was going to be shelved for at least six months. It figured that if Klitschko returned, it would have been in the first year or so after he had pulled out.
There is no way that anyone in the WBC ever anticipated Klitschko sitting on this card for four years like it was a “Get Out of Jail” card on Monopoly.
He’s unquestionably a boon for the sport if he’s back and he can manage to stay healthy and fight on a regular basis for a few years.
That’s almost out of the question. The best to hope for from a guy with Klitschko’s history is that he makes it to the ring on Oct. 11 and then doesn’t break down physically during the fight.
We’re going to have to take this one body part and muscle group at a time.
There’s no doubt that when he’s healthy, Vitali Klitschko is the world’s finest active heavyweight.
The problem over the past four years is that John McCain’s 96-year-old mother, Roberta, has been more active than the erstwhile heavyweight king.
It’s laughable that handlers of Hasim Rahman mounted a campaign three years ago insinuating that somehow Klitschko was afraid of Rahman. If Klitschko truly was afraid, the only thing he could possibly have been afraid of was getting locked up for beating Rahman so badly in their ill-fated WBC title bout.
If Klitschko is healthy on Oct. 11, Sam Peter’s head will bounce off the canvas at The O2 World Arena in Berlin, Germany, as if some Globetrotters star was using it for a dribbling exhibition.
ADVERTISEMENT
Klitschko is healthy now, supposedly.
But it’s 10 days before Klitschko, who was given a free lifetime pass called the WBC heavyweight championship emeritus when he retired three years ago after injuries wouldn’t let him defend the title against Rahman, meets Peter on Oct. 11 in Berlin.
Who knows whether he’ll make it to the post when they’re supposed to fight for the WBC belt in a bout televised nationally in the U.S. on Showtime?
He pulled out of his scheduled November 2005 title defense against Rahman in Las Vegas inside of 10 days, so it’s not like the worst is behind the fight’s promoters.
Even making it to the ring is no guarantee that he’ll give the fans who purchased tickets and those who sit down in front of their television sets what they came to see. The first time he needs to twist awkwardly to avoid the haymakers that Peter throws about 30 times a round will tell a lot.
If Klitschko can walk without a limp, that will be a good sign.
Klitschko, of course, insists he’s fine, but one political candidate or another insisted the fundamentals of the economy are sound a few days before the market collapse, so who knows what to believe any more.
“I know my body well, better than some doctor,” Klitschko said last week on a conference call with reporters. “I feel great. I spend every day in the training gym and after that I go to the doctor. The doctor gave me a medication test and I got the green light from him. My coach gave me a training test, and I had an excellent result. I don’t think about problems. I feel great and I (am) looking forward.”
As good as Klitschko was when he was fighting – and, despite the many naysayers, he was plenty good – he’s now 37 and he hasn’t fought since Dec. 11, 2004.
As great as John Elway once was, would you want him coming back to quarterback your team now, at 48 and after 10 years away?
I didn’t think so.
But Klitschko is back and no one who knows him well knows for sure what to expect. It’s impossible to predict how his body is going to react when he’s hit by a man as powerful and as menacing as Peter when the most stressful thing he’s done over the last four years before this training camp was to run for mayor of Kiev, Ukraine.
OK, I get it. Politics are a dirty, nasty, cutthroat business and probably one of the few businesses on Earth dirtier, nastier and more cutthroat than boxing, but it’s a rare occasion when a political campaign tears the cartilage in your knees or causes the disks in your back to rub together.
You can win an election with a bulging disk, but I’m pretty sure you can’t win a heavyweight championship with one.
Klitschko would have been wise to have stayed retired, because after compiling a 35-2 record with 34 knockouts, there is little else for him to prove. His only two losses came to Chris Byrd, when he had to quit on his stool after dominating the fight because of a torn rotator cuff, and to Lennox Lewis because of a cut the size of a hockey puck around his eye in a fight in which he was doing extremely well.
Other than those two bouts, he won every fight he was in, all but one by knockout.
He’s fighting because his younger brother, Wladimir, now holds the IBF and WBO belts, and he says the brothers always dreamed of being champions at the same time together.
The WBC was forced to give him an immediate title shot because it, in a bid to make him go away in late 2005 after he had pulled out of his title defense with Rahman, named him its champion emeritus.
It promised him that should he ever return, he would get an immediate crack at the title. The WBC’s thinking at the time was that it wanted a title fight (and the sanction fee that brought) and Klitschko was going to be shelved for at least six months. It figured that if Klitschko returned, it would have been in the first year or so after he had pulled out.
There is no way that anyone in the WBC ever anticipated Klitschko sitting on this card for four years like it was a “Get Out of Jail” card on Monopoly.
He’s unquestionably a boon for the sport if he’s back and he can manage to stay healthy and fight on a regular basis for a few years.
That’s almost out of the question. The best to hope for from a guy with Klitschko’s history is that he makes it to the ring on Oct. 11 and then doesn’t break down physically during the fight.
We’re going to have to take this one body part and muscle group at a time.
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