Photo: Pavel Terekhov – By Dave Lahr: As we approach this Saturday night’s bout between World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko and Mexican challenger Chris Arreola, there are rumors that the 38-year-old Klitschko hasn’t been looking all that good in training by some gym rats who’ve been watching him train. This isn’t good news for fans of Klitschko, because he’s facing one of his toughest opponents of his 13 year pro career.

Klitschko is coming into Saturday night’s fight with an extraordinary 92% knockout percentage, which is an incredible number for any fighter. However, most of those knockouts unfortunately came about earlier in Vitali’s career when he was matched very carefully by his German management team. Klitschko has still continued to knockout his opponents in the past four years, albeit against still pretty average opposition.

That’s not taking anything away from Samuel Peter, Juan Carlos Gomez, Danny Williams and Corrie Sanders, because they’re all good fighters. However, I see the 28-year-old Arreola as being much more dangerous than any of those fighters at this point.

Sanders was a lethal fighter earlier in his career but he was starting to show signs of slowing down by the time that Klitschko fought him and didn’t look to be in the best of shape in their fight in April 2004.

Klitschko can still punch well for a fighter his age, but he’s not a big one punch knockout artist like his record would have you believe. For Vitali to get Arreola out of there, he’s going to have to clobber him with punches round after round until at least the 8th or 9th before he can get a stoppage.

And that’s the real problem. Arreola, who has an equally respectable knockout percentage of 89%, is just as dangerous as Klitschko in the ring. Arreola will be firing back with tremendous shots, answering every one of Klitschko’s big punches. This is going to come down to which fighter can take the bigger shots for over the course of the fight.

Right now, I’d have to go with the younger fighter Arreola because of his youth, stamina and partially because of the rumors that I’ve heard about Klitschko’s training. Arreola will be bringing it from the opening bell and forcing Klitschko to fight at a very high pace. Can Klitschko take that kind of pace and pressure without blowing out? That’s the question.

Klitschko looks in good shape on outward appearances, but there’s no getting around the fact that he’s 38 and aging. Klitschko has fought only twice in the past four years, beating Gomez and Peter by knockout. Neither of those fighters were able to pressure Klitschko much.

Indeed, it didn’t look as if Peter of Gomez even tried to really put any pressure on the aging Klitschko. Peter briefly did in the opening round, but then stayed at the end of Klitschko’s jabs after that, eating one punch after another. Peter looked as if he wasn’t there that night and wasn’t mentally ready for the fight.

If you were to show video of Peter’s fight three years earlier against Wladimir Klitschko and then compare it to his performance against Vitali Klitschko, you would swear that the two different versions of Peter weren’t the same fighter. Peter was far less aggressive against Vitali compared to his fight against Wladimir.

Who knows the reason for that? Perhaps it was Peter’s fight against Jameel McCline in 2007, in which Peter was hurt early in the 2nd round and dropped multiple times before rallying to win the bout on a 12 round decision. As for Gomez, he did absolutely nothing against Vitali in terms of offense, spending most of his time holding up his right hand way out in front of him and pawing at Vitali to upset his rhythm.