Vitali Klitschko retains title but is heavyweight division losing dignity?
There was a time when a world heavyweight bout would stop the world. Now the only chance of stopping the traffic is to wait for the lights to turn red.
Vitali Klitschko duly defended his WBC title with a comprehensive points victory over Shannon Briggs in Hamburg. Just how much that enhances the Ukranian’s legacy depends really on whether one views Briggs as a hasbeen or a neverwas in terms of a top-of-the-range fighter.
The challenger was game enough and brought an appetite for the contest, which Klitschko did his best to sate with a diet of leather as he pounded his opponent for 12 rounds. Judges have handed down some surprising scores at times but there was no great shock when all three scored this fight 120-105.
Briggs had talked the talk but he was almost brought to a walk as early as the first round when he was nearly stopped in his tracks by a right hand from the champion. And just in case Briggs had missed that, Klitschko repeated the trick in the second. Klitschko can appear as robotic – if this is the best the division can muster how the mighty have fallen - but that jab can have the accuracy of a trip hammer and it kept Briggs occupied until a straight right did a little more to separate the American from his senses in the fifth.
Klitschko piled on the pressure but Briggs took it all, although how much more the credibility of heavyweight boxing can take is another matter. It is accepted that Klitschko would never step in the ring to face his brother, Wladimir, but that means that the men who dominate the titles – Wladimir currently holds IBF, IBO, WBO belts – have to meet a challenge worthy of what has been described as “the greatest prize in sport”.
It hardly takes the deductive powers of Sherlock Holmes to come up with the name of David Haye, the WBA title incumbent, but a meeting in the ring seems no closer than before, with the younger Klitschko currently in training for a bout with British and Commonwealth champion Derek Chisora in December, a month before Haye meets Audley Harrison.
None of these contests are going to cause even a ripple on the consciousness of the general public and even Haye’s assertion that his bout with Harrison “is the biggest all-British clash since Lewis and Bruno in 1993” forgets that back then enough boxing’s appeal was still helped by some terrestrial tv coverage in Britain. In the days of satellite and pay-per-view the sport has slipped off the casual viewers’ radar.
If it’s most cherished division is not to slip into anonymity the matchmakers have to spark some interest, but that means getting Haye and one of the brothers into a ring. Haye knows that and he fanned the flames just a little more. “Just look at the Klitschkos' record,” Haye said this week. “They pick and choose carefully who they fight.”
Jamie Arthur took the next step to global honours with a unanimous points victory over Kris Hughes for the Commonwealth super-bantamweight championship and Sam Webb successfully defended his British light-middleweight belt with a knockout victory over challenger Martin Concepcion.
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