By Allan Fox: IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko’s next title defense will likely take place on April 25th against unbeaten #2 WBA, #3 WBC, #5 WBO, #8 IBF Bryant Jennings (19-0, 10 KOs) at either Madison Square Garden or the Barclays Center in New York, according to Dan Rafael.
The Jennings fight will be the second fight for Wladimir of his 3-fight contract with HBO. By fighting in the U.S, Wladimir could possibly wind up making less money than he would if he were to fight in Germany where he normally fights.
The German television station RTL pays Wladimir $6 million per fight. However, if he fights in the U.S, it would mean that the fight would take place early in the morning in Germany, and that obviously would mean less eyeballs seeing him. Wladimir could make a little more than $3 million from HBO to fight Jennings.
Wladimir will be fighting his WBO mandatory challenger Tyson Fury later on in 2015, possibly in the summer. That’s a bigger fight than the Jennings match-up, but the defense won’t be due until the summer. Wladimir will let the fight wait while he takes the Jennings match-up.
The Klitschko-Jennings fight likely won’t bring in the same kinds of viewing numbers as Wladimir’s last fight against previously unbeaten Kubrat Pulev last month.
That fight was seen by 10.5 million viewers in Germany, and it was one of Wladimir’s easier fights with him knocking the over-matched Pulev out in the 5th round.
Pulev did a good job of attracting interest in his fight with Wladimir by doing a lot of trash talking, but at the end of the day, Pulev didn’t have the chin or the talent to make the fight a competitive one.
Jennings is coming off of a hard fought 12 round split decision win over Mike Perez last July. Jennings ended up outworking the Cuban Perez with his superior work rate.
Wladimir, 6’6”, will have a huge size and power advantage over the 6’3” Jennings, but oddly enough, Jennings will have a two inch reach advantage in the fight. Without a lot of punching power, Jennings is likely going to be over his head in this fight in the same way that Pulev was.
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