By Jim Dower: After toiling away for 10 years as a pro, “Fast” Eddie Chambers (35-1, 18 KO’s) will finally get his chance at the big time in a title shot against IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (53-3, 47 KO’s) on March 20th, at the ESPRIT arena, in Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. The hard work that the 27-year-old Chambers has put in to get to this moment in his career unfortunately won’t be rewarded by having his fight shown on cable to the American public, as the fight won’t be aired by HBO, ESPN or Showtime, the traditional media outlets for boxing in the United States.

Instead, if American boxing fans want to see the Chambers-Klitschko fight, they’ll have to watch it on the internet for $15 at the Klitschko brothers’ personal website Klitschko.com. That will no doubt dramatically reduce the amount of boxing fans that will see Chambers fight in the U.S, because the fight isn’t being advertized anywhere in American and few casual boxing fans are even aware that the bout is taking place.

Chambers defeated both Samuel Peter and Alexander Dimitrenko last year to get his shot against the 33-year-old Klitschko. However, now that Chambers is at this moment in his career, few boxing experts are giving him much if any chance at beating Klitschko. The reason is simple: Chambers, 6’1”, is giving away a huge amount of size to 6’6” Klitschko, and that in itself is going to be perhaps an insurmountable obstacle for Chambers. His diehard fans point out that Chambers was able to defeat Dimitrenko, an even taller fighter than Klitschko in his last fight last year in July. But the win over Dimitrenko is practically meaningless for Chambers, because Dimitrenko doesn’t fight defensively, has little power, a poor jab and lefts his opponents crowd him on the inside to take away his reach.

Klitschko is the complete opposite of Dimitrenko. He has much better power with either hand, a better jab, and defends well against shorter fighters like Chambers who try to bore in on him on the inside. Chambers won’t be able to do the same things he did in his last fight against Dimitrenko with Wladimir. Chambers will be able to get inside at some points in the fight, but he won’t be able to work there for prolonged periods of time like he did with Dimitrenko.

Klitschko won’t let him and will either grab him in a clinch or quickly move away. And Chambers will have to have a good chin to take the kinds of shots that Klitschko will be throwing at him. Chambers, an excellent defensive fighter, will be able to duck and block many of them. However, Klitschko doesn’t need to land a lot of them for him to take out his opponents.

Klitschko has got big power with both hands and is capable of ending the fight quickly if he can land a big shot at the right moment. But even without Klitschko loading up on his shots, which he might not do, he will still be a tremendous problem for Chambers by throwing his powerful jabs. Chambers, if he can’t get inside, will have to eat those jabs on the outside all night long. This could cause Chamber’s face to puff up and cut at some point in the fight unless he’s able to somehow block Wladimir’s jabs. That’s probably not a realistic expectation for Chambers, because Wladimir throws too many jabs for them all to be blocked and he follows them with left hooks and straight right hands. It’s going to be a big problem for Chambers to have to take that kind of punishment round after round without either busting up badly or going down for the count.