By Jason Kim: For fans wanting to know about whether 41-year-old WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (45-2, 41 KO’s) will retire or not, he’s reportedly going to be making a decision about his career by December 17th at the latest, says Fightnews.com. Vitali is weighing whether he should focus on his political career in the Ukrainian parliament or continue for a little longer his impressive boxing career.

Fans want to see Vitali to stick around long enough for him to fight the likes of David Haye, Tyson Fury and David Price. Those are the main guys that could give Vitali some problems. Haye is obviously #1 on the list because of his worldwide popularity. However, there are some fans who think that Vitali is looking to get out of boxing so that he doesn’t have to fight the much faster Haye and risk getting sent into retirement on a loss.

Vitali defeated Manuel Charr in his last fight last September in a fight that interested nobody other than Vitali’s German fan base. Of all the challengers for Vitali to select, he selected for one that’s only known in Germany and it looked to some boxing people that Vitali was just looking to milk his title with safe fights rather than facing Haye or some of the young heavyweight contenders that could potentially beat him.

Vitali’s brother IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladmir Klitschko defeated Haye easily last year. But Wladimir is a much faster heavyweight with better power, a better jab and superior foot speed compared to his brother Vitali. The things that Wladimir was able to do to Haye, Vitali likely wouldn’t be able to do because he’s not equipped with the same skills.

Vitali retired from the sport from 2004 to 2008 after having previously held the WBC and WBO heavyweight titles. He came back in 2008 and recaptured his World Boxing Council heavyweight title in beating then champion Samuel Peter in October 2008. Vitali has held the title since then, defending it successfully nine times.