Will Wladimir Klitschko Win Any Respect If He Brutally Stops Tony Thompson?

By Boxing News - 07/09/2008 - Comments

wladimir24242.jpgBy Jason Kim: IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (5-3, 44 KOs) has a lot of ground to make up with boxing fans this Saturday night when he defends his title against American Tony Thompson (31-1, 19 KOs) in Hamburg, Germany. At this point, I’m not so certain that Klitschko, 32, will be able to win back many of the fans he lost in his last fight, a dull 12-round unanimous decision over Sultan Ibragimov on February 23rd) even if he stops Thompson very quickly in the bout. So much damage was done in Klitschko’s last fight, in which he looked almost petrified to throw a right hand against the light-hitting Ibragimov, and ended up winning on a decision by using exclusively his jab.

If there’s one thing fans can’t stomach is seeing fear in their favorite fighters, and in Wladimir’s case, he seemed to show nothing but fear for twelve continuous rounds without letup. What made it much worse than it would have been otherwise, however, was the fact that Ibragimov is a fighter with almost absolutely zero power to speak of and had little chance of hurting Wladimir, much less knocking him out.

In a way, it was a watching the character Lennie, a mentally disabled man of great size and strength, from the John Steinbeck story Of Mice and Men, show great fear of the smaller Curley (the bosses smaller, abusive son), who Lennie could crush with his huge size if he only knew what power he possessed.

The sight of Wladimir not only fighting on the back foot against Ibragimov, but also running from him at times, seems to have left an indelible image in the minds of many of Wladimir’s boxing fans, or those who may have been undecided about him after seeing him for those first time. Perhaps for this reason, Emanuel Steward, Wladimir’s trainer, kept urging him on to try and score a knockout during the later rounds of the Ibragimov fight, even though Wladimir was well ahead in the fight having won most of the rounds quite easily. None of what Steward said had any effect on Wladimir, who continued fighting a safety first fight, treating Ibragimov with kid gloves, as if he were a young George Foreman and not the weak-punching threat that he was.

At this point, Wladimir is going to need to beat Thompson badly, something along the lines of the way that Wladimir destroyed opponent David Bostice way back on April 29 2000, where an angry Wladimir (angered, perhaps, because his older brother Vitali had recently quit on his stool in the 9th round and lost his title to Chris Byrd on April 1, 2000) came out and mowed Bostice down, knocking him down twice in the 1st round with left hooks and twice in the 2nd round with mallet-like over hand clubbing right hands to the head.

The fight is on You Tube for those who haven’t seen it, and it shows a young Wladimir fighting offensively, applying a lot of pressure against one of the few opponents in his career around the same height as Wladimir. In fact, Bostice is the same height (6’5″) as Thompson, and it’s interesting to watch how well Wladimir did when fighting someone of equal size with him. He seemed very comfortable with the being able to stand and trade shots with Bostice, who he attacked savagely from the opening moments of the fight.

An impressive knockout like this, I think, would go a long way towards repairing the damage done with his last fight, and maybe even undo the damage done in losses to Lamon Brewster and Corrie Sanders. However, in order for that to happen, Wladimir is going to have to go after Thompson, and try to take him out with big shots. This isn’t a fight that Wladimir can hope to win, or impress, by staying on the outside like he did against Ibragimov. Thompson has too much size for that, and will nail Wladimir on the outside with jabs all night long.

Also, Thompson would much prefer that this fight take place on the inside, where he is much better skilled than Wladimir is at inside fighting. A fight of this nature would likely bore the boxing fans, as it would likely include a great deal of clinching and wrestling. It would also be a fight that Wladimir, a mediocre inside fighter, would lose.