By Erik Schmidt: For the second time since winning his WBA title in April 2007, heavyweight champion Ruslan Chagaev (24-0-1, 17 KOs) has been forced to pull out of a bout due to a virus. His opponent, former WBA heavyweight champion Nikolay Valuev (48-1, 34 KOs) will be forced to wait a little longer, perhaps a lot longer while Chagaev attempts to defeat this lingering virus. Since winning the WBA title by a controversial majority decision over Valuev in 2006, Chagaev has only defended it a paltry one time over Matt Skelton in on January 19th.
Chagaev, 29, had previously been forced to pull out of a title unification bout with Sultan Ibragimov in October 1997 for the same reason, knocked out due to a virus problem. At this stage, Chagaev is catching up to former WBC champion Vitali Klitschko, who cancelled title defenses to Hasim Rahman countless times due to nagging injuries.
Being that Chagaev has been unable to defend his title with much regularity, the WBA needs to strongly consider stripping Chagaev of his title. It’s not fair to the challengers in the WBA, all of whom have had to sit idly by while Chagaev nurses one illness after another and wasting precious time for these well-deserving fighters. Perhaps with an extended time away from the ring, Chagaev can lick his chronic health problems, but that should be without the title. The WBA needs to let the number #1 challenger to his title, Valuev, fight it out with the number #3 challenger, in this case former title holder John Ruiz.
Heck, the fight will probably turn out to be much more interesting than a bout between Chagaev and Valuev, considering that Chagaev only sporadically fought in their initial fight. The Ruiz-Valuev fought in December 2005, a bout in which Valuev won by a majority decision, was full of excitement with both fighters trading shots for the full 12-rounds of the fight. Ruiz, who normally has a nasty reputation for dull wrestling and clinching fights on the inside, showed none of those tactics as he chose to slug it out with Valuev. Indeed, Ruiz looked quite good and many people, this writer included in that group, felt that he had narrowly won the fight. However, Ruiz, a German-based fighter, got the decision fighting in front of a German crowd in Berlin, Germany.
One would hope that the WBA does the wise thing and strips Chagaev of his title. It’s time for the title to go to a healthy champion, one that can defend it on a regular basis without these constant interruptions. It’s not as if Chagaev has been a popular champion, either, for most boxing fans have little interest in him as a champion and mainly see him holding the title until he finally defends it against a good challenger like Valuev. Even in winning the fight against Valuev, Chagaev, the challenger, appeared to lose the fight by a substantial margin.
For a challenger, he looked awful, running most of the time and only rarely mixing it up with Valuev. Most of Chagaev’s punches ended up hitting the gloves or the chest, due to Chagaev’s limited reach. For that reason, it was astonishing to see him awarded the decision, since it’s customary for a champion only to lose his title when he’s been dominated in a convincing fashion. This wasn’t domination of any sort, for the fight was close, but with Valuev clearly landing the majority of the punches that actually scored while Chagaev was hitting mostly gloves with his shots.