By Eric Thomas: IBF heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko’s December 13th defense of his International Boxing Federation title against undefeated Alexander Povetkin (16-0, 14 KOs) had been postponed until a later date, possibly early 2009, due to an ankle injury of Povetkin, who suffered it while in training for his fight. The injury, which affected Povetkin’s ligaments in his left ankle, reportedly occurred after Povetkin tripped over the root of a tree while jogging in Russia. Povetkin isn’t expected to be able to start training again until November, which would be too late for him to get in top condition for his December 13th fight with Klitschko.

As such, the fight will still be taking place, but it won’t be until a date to be determined later. Klitschko will still be carrying out his December 13th title defense, but will have to pick from a limited number of opponents. Unfortunately for Klitschko, the top IBF contenders – Chris Arreola and Alexander Dimitrenko – have fights scheduled during that time, so they’ll be unavailable. However, former heavyweight champions Hasim Rahman and Oleg Maskaev have open schedules during that time. Both of them are very dangerous fighters, and perhaps even more so than Povetkin himself, so it’s unclear whether Wladimir would want to risk his title against big punchers like them.

Rahman still can punch with a lot of power, and with Wladimir’s tender chin, I highly doubt that Wladimir would select him as a replacement fighter. Maskaev would seem like the more likely opponent, as he didn’t look very good in his last fight with Robert Hawkins in September. Andrew Golota, Eddie Chambers, James Toney, Kali Meehan are also potential fighters that Wladimir would fight. Toney or Golota would be the ideal fighters, since both of them are even more recognizable than Povetkin and hence would attract a fairly significant amount of viewers.

Toney, 40, might not be interested in facing Klitschko, despite him saying in the past that he’d like to fight Wladimir. If push came to shove, Toney might not want to mix it up with a fighter the size of Wladimir, because the size disparity between the two would be enormous. Toney may have been able to give the 6’6” Wladimir a good fight a few years ago, but probably not now that he’s aged a little more and has just recently come back from a year away from the ring. Wladimir is coming off an impressive 11th round TKO over Tony Thompson in July.

The bout was still not all that interesting to watch, even though it was a vast improvement over Wladimr’s super dull fight with Sultan Ibragimov in February 2008. Part of the problem is that Wladimir has become a safety first type fighter in the past three years, and he rarely takes chances anymore in his fights. Beyond a token right hand here and there, Wladimir mostly throws nothing but jabs nowadays. He only lets loose with his right hand when he’s positively sure there’s no chance of him being countered. This in effect makes him barely watchable as a fighter.