By Manuel Perez: In the run up to IBF heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko’s (49-3, 44 KOs) unification bout with WBO heavyweight title holder Sultan Ibragimov (22-0-1, 17 KOs) this Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, I’ve noticed that has been almost zero fans interest in the fight for some reason. It seems especially bizarre in that futures like Joe Calzaghe vs. Bernard Hopkins, which is still two months away, is getting more press and interest from the fans and media than Klitschko’s bout with Ibragimov.
At first, I figured it was because of Klitschko being a non-American, something that would give him a backseat to other fighters in America. However, that doesn’t explain the huge amount of interest Americans have in fighters like Calzaghe, who comes from Wales, Miguel Cotto or Manny Pacquiao. Ruling out any kind of disinterest due to nationality, I next figured that Klitschko was disliked due to his tendency to fight in an unpredictable manner, sometimes blowing out good fighters and other times getting stopped by average fighters, like Lamon Brewster, Ross Puritty and Corrie Sanders.
I suppose it’s hard to get behind a fighter when you don’t really feel that he’s a truly talented fighter. In the case of Wladimir, he has shown himself to have immense talent, winning the Olympic Gold medal in the super heavyweight division in the 1996 Olympic games, as well as winning the heavyweight title twice as a professional boxer, starting in 2000. Perhaps since 2005, Wladimir has arguably been the best heavyweight in the division. But, despite what many feel about him being the best fighter, he’s ruled in a time where the talent in the division has been noticeably weak.
There’s been no other fighter like a Lennox Lewis, Mike Tyson or a prime Evander Holyfield with which to challenge Klitschko. For him, it’s been Chris Byrd, Corrie Sanders, Samuel Peter, Lamon Brewster and now Ibragimov. Like I said, good fighters but not the big name fighters from the past, and clearly not someone that would help fault Wladimir to the status of a superstar. The fact that he hasn’t defeated all of them, having lost to the aforementioned Sanders, Puritty and Brewster, make Klitschko look hardly better than most of the top fighters in the division.
If he is the best at this time, it’s not by much, and it’s something that is precarious, that can change at any time depending if he gets clipped hard enough on the chin by one of his opponents. Though he normally doesn’t get dropped by anyone but a hard puncher, Wladimir’s poor stamina makes him vulnerable to any fighter that can stay with him until the late rounds when he typically runs out of gas.
Finally, I suppose another reason that Klitschko may be less popular is his invisibility in the media. He mostly tends to give interviews to newspapers and television, bypassing most boxing internet websites. Though he does give an occasional interview to two or three web sites on a regular basis, he generally rarely gives interviews to the many others out there. In contrast, fighters like Bernard Hopkins and Joe Calzaghe or what you would call media-friendly fighters, constantly being available for interviews year round and excellent at giving really good sound bites. Of the many interviews I’ve read and heard from Wladimir, he tends to use canned answers, which he gives to one interviewer after another, rarely changing the message to what’s being said. That I think is a mistake, because it comes across as if he has nothing new to say or anything interesting to add other than old lines that he’s come up with.
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