Photo: Pavel Terekhov – By Chris Williams: It’s frankly astonishing to compare the huge amount of hoopla made out of Floyd Mayweather Jr’s 12 round shellacking of lightweight Juan Manuel Marquez compared to the seemingly little fanfare that has been made of World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko’s 10th round stoppage win over Chris Arreola on Saturday night. It’s like night and day. The Mayweather fight received the red carpet treatment by HBO, who advertised the bout like mad and put on an HBO 24/7 series.

The fight eventually had 1 million pay-per-view buys, even though it was a non-title fight matching pretty much a big welterweight against a lightweight. In contrast, Klitschko, who is the equivalent of a Mayweather in the heavyweight division, was facing an unbeaten Arreola in his own weight division.

This wasn’t a case of Klitschko cherry picking from two divisions below him to fight the best/beatable fighter to make an example of. Yet, the Mayweather fight gets the attention, while the Klitschko fight is almost ignored in comparison. It’s strange and disappointing at the same time.

It’s not as if Mayweather is a more exciting fighter than Klitschko because I see them both as similar type fighters. Both win by punching, moving and trying not to get hit. The main differences are that Klitschko puts more power on shots, is much bigger and isn’t as fast.

But if you were to ask me who the more entertaining fighter is, I’d have to say Klitschko by a mile. At least he comes to fight and exchange shots and doesn’t pot shot and back up the whole fight. He does at least stand his ground and exchange.

The lack of attention that Klitschko has received may be because of the different expectations from boxing fans. It seems as if boxing fans have come to expect that heavyweights will be willing to go out and score knockouts and if they don’t try to take out their opponents as quick as possible, for example, Mike Tyson, then the fans tend to tune them out.

However, fans seem to have different expectations for the lighter weight classes, because they flock to see Mayweather’s fights despite him being a mostly hit and right pot shot artist and not a fighter like Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito, both of whom put it on the line and come out looking to slug with their opponents.

At this point, Klitschko isn’t going to try and change his style to suit boxing fans because he gets knockouts anyway without taking punishment. With a record of 38-2, 37 KO’s, it shows that he’s excellent power because most of his opponents haven’t been able to make it through the bout without being knocked out.

Still, Vitali will never be as popular in the United States as Mayweather, and it kind of boggles my mind to try and understand why. Personally, I don’t watching Klitschko’s fights, but I can’t stand watching Mayweather’s bouts even more.

Both fighters are boring to me, even though Klitschko knocks out his opponents. But I see Mayweather’s fights as totally unwatchable because of his safety first style of fighting and often because of his hand picked opposition. If you’re a welterweight, why are you fighting lightweight or a short light welterweight?