By Chris Williams: At today’s weigh-in for the IBF/WBO heavyweight title match between champion Wladimir Kitsch (52-3, 46 KO’s) and challenger Ruslan Chagaev (25-0-1, 17 KO‘s). The Ukrainian Wladimir came in at a slender 240 pounds. Chagaev, 30, weighed in at 225 pounds, a weight that is normal for him.

Wladimir, 33, appears to be a little big over-trained for the fight as if he over did it a little bit in training camp. It’s not surprising that this happened, because Wladimir was originally scheduled to fight knockout artist David Haye, and Wladimir might have trained extra hard (harder than he needed to if you ask me) for the bout to avoid getting any unpleasant surprises in the fight.

Chagaev looks in shape for him, although he looks to be about 15 to 20 pounds heavier than he needs to be. However, Chagaev always looks kind of pudgy, as if he just climbed out of a bar on a Saturday night. It hasn’t hurt him thus far against the level of competition that he’s faced up to this point. One of the reasons that Chagaev hasn’t been hurt could be that he hasn’t really faced too many quality fighters in his career. His best opponents have been John Ruiz, Michael Sprott, and Nikolay Valuev.

Wladimir has to adjust to an entirely different style for this fight, because Chagaev is a southpaw whereas Haye is a right hander and fights out of the orthodox style. Chagaev isn’t fast, however, so Wladimir could handle his style without getting hit as much as he did in his losing effort against southpaw Corrie Sanders six years ago in 2003.

It’s too bad that Wladimir has to face Chagaev rather than Haye, because the British heavyweight would likely be the much easier fight for Wladimir due to Haye’s glass jaw. But it looks as if now Vitali will get the pleasure of fighting Haye in September, and get to the the one to knock him out and send him packing to the cruiserweight division.