By Tim Nielson: I still can’t believe that Vitali Klitschko (35-2, 34 KOs) is foolish enough to take on World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Samuel Peter (30-1, 23 KOs) without at least one tune-up bout beforehand. Unlike some of the poor and badly outclassed opponents that Vitali faced before retiring four years ago, Peter is fearless and has even better knockout power than the 37 year-old Vitali. In a way, this is like a bout between fighters of different eras, like a vintage 90s fighter trying to shake the dust off of his armament to test his power against a modern knockout artist in the way of Peter.

I have no doubts that Vitali, a prime version, would probably more than good enough to beat Peter by a decision. The problem is, Klitschko hasn’t seen action for four years and with that much time away from boxing he’s bound to have lost something as far as stamina, hand speed and power goes. Maybe if he were still in his 20s it wouldn’t be such a big deal, but he’s nearing forty now, and showing quite a bit of gray hair along the sides. I doubt even a fighter in their 20s would be nearly as good if they slept through four years of their career and suddenly tried picking the sport back up at 28 or 29. Whereas Peter has been improving with wins over James Toney, Jameel McCline and Oleg Maskaev, Vitali has been running for elections and working on his new promotional company, K2 East Promotions.

Even at his best, Vitali never fought anyone nearly as fierce, powerful and confident like Peter will be on October 11th. Corrie Sanders, a southpaw knockout artist, would come the closest to the power of Peter, but by the time that Vitali got a hold of him, Sanders was 38, and well past his prime. In that fight, Vitali was clipped by Sanders early on and almost knocked down. One can only guess what a younger version of Sanders would have done to Vitali on that night. In facing Peter, Vitali is fighting someone with as much power as Sanders, but younger and with a much better chin than him.

This is happening at the worst time for Vitali, because without having set foot in the ring in the past four years, he’s bound to have lost a lot of his skills through old age and inactivity. If Vitali had a chance to fight for a year or so and try and sharpen his skills, he might give Peter a decent fight. But even with a year of fights, he’d still likely not come close to recapturing his diminished skills. I’d love to be a fly on the wall to watch some of his training sessions to see how much slower he’s become.

I can’t imagine that he’s sparred hard against anyone, knowing that with his propensity for injuring himself, he’d probably slip another disc in his back or reinjure his previously injured knee. I kind of feel sorry for Peter, though, because even when he beats Vitali, he’ll probably not get credit for it. There will be a huge cry about how Vitali injured himself or he lost because of his long layoff from boxing. Peter won’t get the credit, and will have to be satisfied with just winning the fight and getting the opportunity to avenge his earlier defeat to Wladimir Klitschko.

A victory for Vitali would probably be a huge plus for boxing, because it would be like a dream come true scenario where a fighter comes back after four years away from the sport, in which he’s done zero sparring, and comes back to beat the number two fighter in the heavyweight division. Unfortunately for Vitali, there’s such a thing called reality that makes such scenarios damn near impossible. What we’ll likely see is Vitali coming back, missing punches, looking slow, getting hit a lot and fading quickly as the fight goes into past the 5th round.

By the 8th round, if he’s still standing, Vitali will likely look like a big Goldfish out of water, gasping for breath with his mouth wide open and grimacing badly every time Peter hits him with a huge right hand. I doubt he’ll go down on his own and will probably end up quitting again, like he did against Chris Byrd, in between rounds. This will set up another one of the many “revenge of the brother” fights where Wladimir will come to Vitali’s rescue and proceed to wipe the deck with Peter in the very next fight. That I have no doubt about.