Wladimir wants WBC strap vacated by Vitali

By Boxing News - 12/18/2013 - Comments

wlad99By Scott Gilfoid: Now that Vitali Klitschko has finally vacated his WBC title after having chosen to not defend it for eons, IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (61-3, 51 KO’s) is now targeting that belt to try and add that to his collection. Wladimir is hoping to get a chance to fight the eventual winner of the fight for the vacant WBC belt.

It’s still unknown which two lucky heavyweights will be fighting for Vitali’s WBC strap, but I have a strong feeling that we could be seeing Deontay Wilder facing Bermane Stiverne for that belt instead of Chris Arreola getting the shot against Stiverne. The 6’7″ Deontay would have an excellent chance at capturing the crown and that in turn would set up a fight between the 6’6″ Wladimir and Deontay for 2015.

It obviously can’t happen in 2014, because Wladimir has back to back mandatory defenses due for his WBO strap against Alex Leapai and his IBF title against Kubrat Pulev. Those two fights will take up all of 2014 unfortunately. So the earliest we’ll see Wladimir possibly getting a crack at the WBC belt is in 2015 at best.

Wladimir said to the Bild “Of course, it is my goal to bring the WBC title back into the Klitschko family.”

With Wladimir overloaded with titles as it is, I’m not at all excited with seeing him grab another title by adding the WBC strap to his collection, because the contenders that the WBC has will be waiting around for years to get a chance to fight for the WBC belt if Wladimir were able to get it. I mean, how is Wladimir going to be able to defend against the top 15 the WBC has ranked on a timely basis when he’s busy fighting the contenders ranked in the top 15 by the other sanctioning organizations. It’s hard fair when one guy holds the belt. If the sanctioning bodies are going to water down the sport with their four different titles, then they need to make it so that the champions can’t hold down multiple titles because it creates too much of a bottleneck with the contenders waiting for good portions of their careers for a title shot.

By the time Wladimir faces Deontay – or Stiverne – for the WBC title in 2015, Wladimir will be 38 or 39, and I think he’ll be too old to beat either of them.



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