By Jason Kim: WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (37-2, 36 KOs) wants a shot at WBA heavyweight title holder Nikolay Valuev now. Klitschko, 37, stopped challenger Juan Carlos Gomez (44-2, 35 KOs) in the 9th round on Saturday night in Stuttgart, Germany. Vitali looked sluggish, missing shots, gasping for breath and struggling with the awkward style of Gomez until finally solving it in the 7th round when Vitali was able to temporarily put him down with a hard right hand to the head.
Two rounds later, with Gomez having difficulties seeing out of his cut right eye, Vitali finished him off with two big lefts to the head, sending him down for the final time.
After the fight, an exhausted Vitali, who an hour later could still barely catch his breath, spoke of wanting to fight the 7-foot Valuev, a fighter who is considered to be the weakest of the current heavyweight champions in boxing.
It’s hard not to see why Vitali wants to fight the big Russian bear, because casual boxing fans are interested in seeing Valuev fight no matter who it’s against. In a matchup between the 6’8” Vitali and the 7’ foot Valuev, it’s a fight that would almost surely bring in a lot of fans, make a lot of money and give the heavyweight division a badly needed mini-mega fight.
The bout would be huge especially in Europe, where Valuev is more well known. In the U.S, it likely wouldn’t be nearly as big a fight but would still bring in a lot of fans who would be interested in seeing two of the biggest heavyweights in the division going head to head.
There’s one problem, however. The WBC wants Vitali to fight Oleg Maskaev, whom they have designated as Vitali’s new number #1 mandatory challenger, and who Vitali must fight next or risk getting stripped of his WBC heavyweight title.
Although Vitali has appealed to an outside mediator to try and not to have to fight Maskaev, the chances are he’s going to have to fight Oleg or else lose his heavyweight title.
Vitali’s goal is to win a second title to go along with his WBC belt, making him and his brother Wladimir Klitschko as champions who hold two belts a piece. Wladimir currently is the IBF and WBO heavyweight champion.
Whether Vitali gets his fight against Valuev or not, there’s no question that Vitali and Wladimir are the two best heavyweights in the division at this point in time. Some boxing fans – a small minority – feel that British heavyweight David Haye might actually be the best heavyweight in the division.
After seeing Vitali’s poor performance against Gomez on Saturday night, it’s hard not to agree with them about Haye.
It seems as if Vitali is trying to get the boxing public really excited about him fighting Maskaev, so much so that they could assist in putting pressure on the WBC for him to fight Maskaev. I doubt that will happen, however. Sure, the public wouldn’t mind seeing a Valuev vs. Vitali fight on the horizon, but probably not enough to get the WBC to change their mind about Vitali fighting Maskaev.
Valuev has never been a popular champion from the beginning and with his loss to Ruslan Chagaev in 2007, along with Valuev’s controversial 12-rouund decision over 46-year-old Holyfield last year, he’s lost a lot of credibility with fans. It seems as if Vitali is a couple years late in wanting a big fight with Valuev.
It would be big in some ways, but not the kind of fight that it would have been if Vitali had come out of retirement two years ago and fought Valuev. Big Nikolay has slowed down dramatically in the past couple of years, and is even slower and more ponderous now than he ever was before.
At the end of the day, Vitali might be better off looking at things in a realistic way instead of dreaming about fights that will never be, like, for instance, his dream of wanting to fight a rematch with Lennox Lewis.
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