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THIS IS AN ARTICLE I WROTE A WHILE BACK. MAYBE A BIT LONG FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS POST, BUT SO BE IT...
The Klitschko Dilemma
Nowadays, it seems to be every boxing fan’s favourite pastime to bash the heavyweight division. The role of champion is divided three and a half ways (the big dumb Three, and the little dumb one), and the rest of the upper echelon is populated by has beens and wannabes. So why are some media pundits hailing Vitali Klitschko as the real thing?
Sure, he is the linear champion, meaning his championship is the same one Tyson, Ali, Marciano, and Louis held. His last fights have been against top 10 rated fighters. He has, for all his lack of grace, a nearly perfect KO ratio with thirty-four out before the final bell in thirty-five fights. The other two “distputees”, WBA strapholder John Ruiz and IBF titlist Chris Byrd, have totalled two KOs in their last combined sixteen decisions (Ruiz, 1 for 7; and Byrd, 1 for 9). Most of those were close fights, and in their most recent matches they both went down on the way to razor close, controversial decisions. As HBO commentator Larry Merchant said, Klitschko defends his title with style. The real question remains, however: how much substance is there.
Calling Klitschko somewhat awkward is like calling Angela Jolie somewhat attractive. Some people say he’s robotic, but at times he’s downright stiff as a board. Having said that he stands right in front of you and avoids punches with crafty footwork, and , yes, head movement. Or rather, torso movement. Due to his super-sized frame, at 6’7”, his opponents are constantly attacking higher ground. Any military personelle will tell you, this is a strategic disadvantage. In his case, it augments his reach advantage because his opponent has to shoot upwards, reducing their arm length. When the leather starts flying his way he simply leans back in his rigid way, and avoids the shots. That, combined with some pretty keen instincts and timing, allow him to avoid most damage from even quick fisted boxers like Chris “Rapid-Fire” Byrd. Another factor may be how deceptive this awkward-but-kinda-slick style is. As a fighter it must be like fighting a big plywood board that dodges. You’re convinced you can hit it, so you swing, but somehow it avoids you as though it’s defying physics. That’s got to be a little frustrating. Vitali pulls off nice subtle feints as well, and you want to believe that his telephone-pole throwing style doesn’t have room for that, but he baits you all the same. And it doesn’t hurt that Klitschko is content to allow opponents to march into his kill-zone and counterpunch. He can just stand his ground and pound you.
The rest of his defense isn’t any prettier, or, for that matter, any less effective. Very rarely do you see Klitschko’s hands high and his elbows tucked. Instead of blocking punches, he seems to swat them away in the same way he throws punches, with seemingly elbowless sledgehammer arms. We have a word for this, though: parrying. His version may not be sexy, but that’s still what it is. Again, keen instincts and timing allow him to do this.
What these stylistic traits do, however, is cause him to expend a lot of energy avoiding shots. The Klitschko fatigue factor is still an unsettled subject. Frequently Vitali is huffing and puffing during a fight. His brother, Wladamir’s collapse at the feet of Lamon Brewster didn’t help the view that the family has fatigue problems. This is one of the points in the argument that one of boxing’s best, former middleweight-turned-heavyweight-contender James Toney, would box circles around Klitschko. Toney’s little slips and ducks would have Klitschko missing all night, carrying him into the late rounds, all the while touching him to the head, and more importantly, the body.. While big fighters usually have problems with the gas tank, the only instance where Vitali has had to go the distance, against German Timo Hoffman, he dominated, and won all twelve rounds. It’s entirely possible that the enormous champion would keep Toney at the end of his swiping jab, as he has with most of his other counterparts.
You could also argue that Vitali proved his defense against guile in his meeting with Chris Byrd. Slick, speedy, and safety-first Byrd may be, but the Ukrainian found him so much that he threw his shoulder out doing so. In the middle of the tenth and eleventh round Klitschko stated that he could not continue to fight, citing an injured shoulder (rotator cuff, as it turned out) as the reason. Ahead by a wide margin on all the score cards, all he would have had to do, really, is not get knocked out, hence the nickname that followed – “Quitschko”. That brings us to one of the proven points about Vitali Klitschko: his chin. His only losses were due to injury, and in both fights he was ahead on the cards at the time of the stoppage. All the other fighters in the top ten have been knocked silly at some point in their career, but Klitschko has never been down – we’ve never really seen him hurt. Sanders got his attention a few times, but he never really did any significant damage. But we do know one other thing about the big man: he succumbs to pain like any other human. When he blew out the shoulder against Byrd he demonstrated that he has a threshold perhaps less than Toney (who fought through a torn bicep and cleanly outboxed Rydell Booker in his last outing), or Tyson (the knee injury during his loss to Klitschko conqueror Danny Williams), or Arturo Gatti (nuff said). And if there’s a flaw in his game, it’s that he tends to leave his body exposed when he’s leaning away from punches. An effective inside fighter like Toney or Hasim Rahman could chop him down like the proverbial oak tree. All they have to do is get inside, if they can.
That seems to be the hardest thing though. For a big man, Vitali’s punch output is fairly high. And most of the punches are just pawing jab, designed to keep you away, or slap down your guard so that a right hand can follow. For that matter, his jab, left hook and left uppercut are very nearly all the same punch. The jab just pokes, the hook barely turns and the uppercut is just a rising arm shot. But he’s so big and heavy-handed that getting hit by them is like walking into a door, a wall, or an electric fence, respectively. He stays economical with his punches, too. In a way he’s like a heavyweight Kassim Ouma. He doesn’t load up and swing as hard as he can, but he keeps touching you knowing that eventually you’ll crumble from the assault. He’s happy to go to decision, but he really never has to.
As a person, he is endearing, though. Though his thick accent and brutally broken English, you can hear the underlying intelligence. More importantly, you can also hear the sincerity. In this age of sports personalities hiding behind uber-careful, noncommital sports interviewspeak, it’s refreshing to see a professional athlete at the top of his game answer questions the way we want them answered. Klitschko’s modest, he doesn’t dodge the hardball, and he is always frank and honest about himself, his game and his career. And that’s why it’s especially easy to root for him. He may (or may not) be the torch carrier to the next great heavyweight champ, but he certainly does raise the torch high enough to cast a little light on how the rest of the division is looking by keeping the
The Klitschko Dilemma
Nowadays, it seems to be every boxing fan’s favourite pastime to bash the heavyweight division. The role of champion is divided three and a half ways (the big dumb Three, and the little dumb one), and the rest of the upper echelon is populated by has beens and wannabes. So why are some media pundits hailing Vitali Klitschko as the real thing?
Sure, he is the linear champion, meaning his championship is the same one Tyson, Ali, Marciano, and Louis held. His last fights have been against top 10 rated fighters. He has, for all his lack of grace, a nearly perfect KO ratio with thirty-four out before the final bell in thirty-five fights. The other two “distputees”, WBA strapholder John Ruiz and IBF titlist Chris Byrd, have totalled two KOs in their last combined sixteen decisions (Ruiz, 1 for 7; and Byrd, 1 for 9). Most of those were close fights, and in their most recent matches they both went down on the way to razor close, controversial decisions. As HBO commentator Larry Merchant said, Klitschko defends his title with style. The real question remains, however: how much substance is there.
Calling Klitschko somewhat awkward is like calling Angela Jolie somewhat attractive. Some people say he’s robotic, but at times he’s downright stiff as a board. Having said that he stands right in front of you and avoids punches with crafty footwork, and , yes, head movement. Or rather, torso movement. Due to his super-sized frame, at 6’7”, his opponents are constantly attacking higher ground. Any military personelle will tell you, this is a strategic disadvantage. In his case, it augments his reach advantage because his opponent has to shoot upwards, reducing their arm length. When the leather starts flying his way he simply leans back in his rigid way, and avoids the shots. That, combined with some pretty keen instincts and timing, allow him to avoid most damage from even quick fisted boxers like Chris “Rapid-Fire” Byrd. Another factor may be how deceptive this awkward-but-kinda-slick style is. As a fighter it must be like fighting a big plywood board that dodges. You’re convinced you can hit it, so you swing, but somehow it avoids you as though it’s defying physics. That’s got to be a little frustrating. Vitali pulls off nice subtle feints as well, and you want to believe that his telephone-pole throwing style doesn’t have room for that, but he baits you all the same. And it doesn’t hurt that Klitschko is content to allow opponents to march into his kill-zone and counterpunch. He can just stand his ground and pound you.
The rest of his defense isn’t any prettier, or, for that matter, any less effective. Very rarely do you see Klitschko’s hands high and his elbows tucked. Instead of blocking punches, he seems to swat them away in the same way he throws punches, with seemingly elbowless sledgehammer arms. We have a word for this, though: parrying. His version may not be sexy, but that’s still what it is. Again, keen instincts and timing allow him to do this.
What these stylistic traits do, however, is cause him to expend a lot of energy avoiding shots. The Klitschko fatigue factor is still an unsettled subject. Frequently Vitali is huffing and puffing during a fight. His brother, Wladamir’s collapse at the feet of Lamon Brewster didn’t help the view that the family has fatigue problems. This is one of the points in the argument that one of boxing’s best, former middleweight-turned-heavyweight-contender James Toney, would box circles around Klitschko. Toney’s little slips and ducks would have Klitschko missing all night, carrying him into the late rounds, all the while touching him to the head, and more importantly, the body.. While big fighters usually have problems with the gas tank, the only instance where Vitali has had to go the distance, against German Timo Hoffman, he dominated, and won all twelve rounds. It’s entirely possible that the enormous champion would keep Toney at the end of his swiping jab, as he has with most of his other counterparts.
You could also argue that Vitali proved his defense against guile in his meeting with Chris Byrd. Slick, speedy, and safety-first Byrd may be, but the Ukrainian found him so much that he threw his shoulder out doing so. In the middle of the tenth and eleventh round Klitschko stated that he could not continue to fight, citing an injured shoulder (rotator cuff, as it turned out) as the reason. Ahead by a wide margin on all the score cards, all he would have had to do, really, is not get knocked out, hence the nickname that followed – “Quitschko”. That brings us to one of the proven points about Vitali Klitschko: his chin. His only losses were due to injury, and in both fights he was ahead on the cards at the time of the stoppage. All the other fighters in the top ten have been knocked silly at some point in their career, but Klitschko has never been down – we’ve never really seen him hurt. Sanders got his attention a few times, but he never really did any significant damage. But we do know one other thing about the big man: he succumbs to pain like any other human. When he blew out the shoulder against Byrd he demonstrated that he has a threshold perhaps less than Toney (who fought through a torn bicep and cleanly outboxed Rydell Booker in his last outing), or Tyson (the knee injury during his loss to Klitschko conqueror Danny Williams), or Arturo Gatti (nuff said). And if there’s a flaw in his game, it’s that he tends to leave his body exposed when he’s leaning away from punches. An effective inside fighter like Toney or Hasim Rahman could chop him down like the proverbial oak tree. All they have to do is get inside, if they can.
That seems to be the hardest thing though. For a big man, Vitali’s punch output is fairly high. And most of the punches are just pawing jab, designed to keep you away, or slap down your guard so that a right hand can follow. For that matter, his jab, left hook and left uppercut are very nearly all the same punch. The jab just pokes, the hook barely turns and the uppercut is just a rising arm shot. But he’s so big and heavy-handed that getting hit by them is like walking into a door, a wall, or an electric fence, respectively. He stays economical with his punches, too. In a way he’s like a heavyweight Kassim Ouma. He doesn’t load up and swing as hard as he can, but he keeps touching you knowing that eventually you’ll crumble from the assault. He’s happy to go to decision, but he really never has to.
As a person, he is endearing, though. Though his thick accent and brutally broken English, you can hear the underlying intelligence. More importantly, you can also hear the sincerity. In this age of sports personalities hiding behind uber-careful, noncommital sports interviewspeak, it’s refreshing to see a professional athlete at the top of his game answer questions the way we want them answered. Klitschko’s modest, he doesn’t dodge the hardball, and he is always frank and honest about himself, his game and his career. And that’s why it’s especially easy to root for him. He may (or may not) be the torch carrier to the next great heavyweight champ, but he certainly does raise the torch high enough to cast a little light on how the rest of the division is looking by keeping the
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