By Scott Gilfoid: After months of negotiations former WBC/WBO heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (35-2, 34 KOs) have come to an agreement for a bout in October, though no official date has been set as of this time. It will be the first bout for Klitschko, 37, since his defeat of Danny Williams in December 2004. Following that fight, Vitali was injured repeatedly while training for a title defense against his then number #1 challenger Hasim Rahman. After multiple cancellations, involving months of time wasted for both fighters, Vitali finally stepped away from the sport and officially retired from boxing. For whatever reason, Klitschko suddenly announced late last year that he had decided on making a comeback to regain the titles.

Rather than having to work his way back like most fighters, Vitali was given the status of champion emeritus by the WBC, thus immediately thrusting him to the top of the division to take on the champion. Most recently, the dust cleared between the two WBC champions Oleg Maskaev and the interim champion Samuel Peter, with Peter winning the fight by stoppage. This set up another potential Klitschko vs. Peter bout. The first bout, Wladimir Klitschko, Vitali’s younger brother, defeated Peter in 2005, in one of the most exciting fights of the year.

That, unfortunately for Vitali, that is the fight that the fans would much rather see instead of the injury-prone Vitali, who many people doubt will ever make into the fight in one piece. If there’s any prove to these doubts, while training for a much needed tune-up bout last year, Vitali received yet another injury which resulted in that bout being canceled. If Vitali can somehow make it into the fight with Peter, it’s doubtful how much Vitali will have left of his once impressive boxing skills.

To be sure, four years out of the sport of boxing can’t have helped him any. The worst part, however, is that he’s going into his fight with Peter, who is considered to be the second best heavyweight in the division, without any much-needed tune-up bouts with which to help him prepare. Certainly, with his history of injuries, they would never let Vitali risk taking a tune-up bout at this stage, because there would be too many chances of something going wrong for Vitali, with him blowing out a knee or his back yet again. Without a tune-up, Vitali will be facing a fighter that will be trying to take his head off from round one.

I don’t expect Peter to be able to catch up to Vitali immediately, but once the fights gets to the halfway point, you can expect to see Vitali having some kind of physical breakdown of some sort, whether that be his skin (he has a history of cutting easily), his back or one of his knees blowing out again, it will signal the end for him. I frankly don’t see Peter even having to stop him in a typical knockout fashion, because if Peter even bumps into Vitali hard a few times something will break inside of the Ukrainian fighter and will get a stoppage none the less.

Once Vitali is out of the way, this will set up the fight that people really want to see – Wladimir Klitschko vs. Peter, and for that matter, it will also set up another “revenge of the brother” scenario in which Klitschko attempts to get revenge for Vitali’s defeat. He’s done it once before with Chris Byrd, who defeated Vitali earlier in his career, and Vitali has returned the favor by defeating Ross Puritty, who knocked Wladimir out much earlier in his career.