By Allan Fox: IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (59-3, 50 KO’s) will be fighting on April 6th in Germany against an opponent still to be determined. According to ESPNNewYork.com, it doesn’t look like it’ll be against WBA heavyweight champion Alexander Povetkin. Apparently, he’s not all that interested in taking the fight right now despite talk from his promoter that he wants the bout.
In that case the options are very slim for Wladimir. He’s had three consecutive easy fights against Jean Marco Mormeck, Tony Thompson and Mariusz Wach. He might want to jump ahead of the Tomasz Adamek vs. Kubrat Pulev fight and pick one of those guys to fight. If not them, then the rest of options are pretty poor right now.
The big British heavyweights David Price and Tyson Fury seem to be waiting for Wladimir’s brother Vitali Klitschko to retire so that they can go after his belt. They’re not likely to agree to fight the younger, much more mobile Wladimir. There’s Alexander Dimitrenko, Alexander Ustinov, Denis Boytsov, Ruslan Chagaev and Bryant Jennings. Those aren’t fights that would be competitive because those guys aren’t in the same league as Wladimir. Jennings and Boytsov are good heavyweights, but they’re medium sized heavyweights in terms of height and they’ll be out of their league against Wladimir.
Wladimir defeated Wach by a 12 round unanimous decision last November. This was Wladimir’s first fight with Johnathon Banks as his trainer. Banks took over for Wladimir’s longtime trainer Emanuel Steward, who passed away recently. Banks did a good job of settling Wladimir down after he was staggered by a big right hand from Wach in the 5th round. Wladimir came on to give Wach a pretty bad beating for the remainder of the fight.
A rematch between Wladimir and David Haye would be interesting fight compared to Wladimir’s other options that he currently has. However, it’s unknown at this point if Vitali is interested in fighting Haye. If not, then Wladimir needs to think seriously about fighting Haye so that he can get a good payday, and try and improve on his last performance from 2011 when he beat Haye by a lopsided 12 round decision.
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