By Jason Kim: I’ve always been a big fan of boxing and especially the heavyweight division. There’s nothing better than to sit down on occasion and watch a good heavyweight bout on HBO or Showtime on the rare occasions that they have a decent fight scheduled. However, it seems that less and less often there’s a fight worth watching. That’s not the network’s fault but rather than lack of good quality fighters. When I look at the cast of characters that inhabit the heavyweight division nowadays, I’m less than pleased. With fighters like Wladimir Klitschko, Samuel Peter and Ruslan Chagaev holding titles, all decent fighters, it’s hard to get excited about the division.
They’re all good fighters in their own way, but none of them are close to being in the class of a George Foreman (76-5, 68 KOs) in terms of power, knockout ability or star power. Perhaps the closest thing to it, I guess, would be Wladimir Klitschko, but he doesn’t fight hard most of the time, throw his punches with the same intensity or have the same take no prisoners approach to fighting that a young Foreman showed. Peter, the WBC heavyweight belt holder, is a lot more aggressive, tending to throw ever punch with knockout intentions.
The problem with him, however, is that he’s short, at 6’1″, slow and often slightly overweight, and has rather poor boxing skills. Foreman, in the early part of his career, was a slugger as well, but he had good boxing skills, and did pretty much everything with excellent form. At 6’4″, 217 lbs, Foreman had the size and reach that made him such a force in the division. There was few heavyweights that could match him for size and the ones that could, didn’t have the power that he possessed.
Chagaev, the WBA heavyweight champion, is even shorter than Peter, at 6’0″, and is more of a Joe Frazier type fighter, depending on landing big, shorter punches at close range to do most of his damage. He doesn’t have the power or size that Foreman had, and because of that, Chagaev has had problems as of recently when facing bigger opponents like Nikolay Valuev, John Ruiz and Max Skelton. Other than the title holders, there’s Vitali Klitschko, the 6’8″ brother of Wladimir, who recently decided on making a comeback. Vitali has a good right hand, an excellent chin and a high intensity offensive style of fighting.
The problem with Vitali, however, is that his body often isn’t able to hold up under the normal rigors of training for a fight, which causes him to cancel bouts. When he’s fights, he often looks good and is a dangerous fighter. Getting him in the ring is the problem.
At 37, it will be minor miracle if he ever makes it into another fight without sustaining some kind of awful injury, either to his leg, shoulder or back – several of the places that Vitali has been previously injured. If Vitali could have held himself together somehow, he’d have been the perfect Foreman-like fighter that could have held onto the heavyweight title for 5-10 years. However, his mind has been willing but his body has been weak.