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How clinical Klitschkos ended razzmatzz


Heavyweight kings. . . Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko celebrate another victory.

 A fierce left hook ended it in the fifth round. Despite the clinical finish and the thunderous punch, the news went largely unnoticed. The event was heavyworld champion Wladimir Klitschko defending his four championship belts. 

 The event took place on Saturday in Hamburg, Germany. And how did the heavyweight title fight end up being a brief in the newspapers, and even crucially, non-event on radio, is quite astonishing. What happened to the days when the heavyweight championship was top billing for weeks ahead of the date, and big news on the fight weekend until the Monday. On Monday November 17, my paper Sowetan did not carry an article on the event. The Times had it as the shortest brief in a column of four briefs. 

 So what happened to the biggest slam of not just boxing but world sport as a whole? This is the station that made Muhammad Ali a legend that he is; where would he be had he been the flyweight champion? I don't mean to insult boxers in the lighter divisions, but the heavyweight propelled professional boxing to zenith heights and gave the sport more excitement and better known sportsmen. Imagine names like Joe "Brown Bomber" Louis, Rocky Marciano, George Foreman, Ken Norton, Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson and Evander Hollyfield. The latter was essentially an engineered heavyweight because he wasn't getting any love dominating the junior-heavyweight division. So Hollyfield stepped up and got respect.

 There were other fine heavyweights such as Sonny Liston, Earnie Shavers and in latter years Lennox Lewis. And in SA we still believe the likes of Leon Spinks, John Tate and Mike Weavers were the real deal though in honest truth they earned some fame just because they were heavyweights and heavyweight fighting was big news.
Then came the Klitschkos -  Vitali and Wladslaw. The Ukrainian pair emerged on the scene with doctorates, an unconventional amour for heavyweight boxing. Both brothers were born in unusual places because of the work of their military officer father during the days of the Soviet Union. Vitali was born July 19 1971 in Belovodsk, Kyrgyzstan, while Wladimir was born in Semy, Kazakhstan, on March 25, 1976. They also grew up in East Germany as their  father was a military attache there for the USSR. 

 Vitali was nicknamed Dr Ironfist for the stranglehold he had on the heavyweight title, which returned the second highest knockout rate (87.23%) after Marciano's 87.76%. He holds a PhD in sports science. Vitali, now retired, is the current mayor of Kiev, Ukraine's capital.
Wladimir, or Dr Steelhammer, also holds a PhD in sports science. The Klitschkos are studious, disciplined and hard working, values perhaps inherited from the high ranking military officer their father was. Their clinical approach, which has yielded a total of mere five losses out of  113 wins, speaks volumes about their ability in the ring. Clearly this is untouchable, and therefore killed off any challenge, hype, vibrancy in the heavyweight division. Moreover, the Ukrainians have taken the title from the US and its hype masters.

 For the record, Wladimir's fight on Saturday was against IBF's mandatory challenger Kubrat Pulev from Bulgaria. He was unbeaten in 20 pro fights before he was sledgehammered in the fifth in the World Arena. 
Wladimir Klitschko is now the longest reigning IBF, WBO & IBO heavyweight champion in history with the most title defenses for those organisations. Overall, he is the second longest reigning heavyweight champion of all time with the second most successful career grand total title defenses,  22. 

 With a total of 26 world championship fights, he is just one fight behind Joe Louis' tally of 27 title fights. With stats like these, and big personalities the Klitschkos have, heavyweight boxing perhaps is waiting for their era to pass before the rumble and the razzmatazz offered by boxers from the streets returns.

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