By Chris Williams: Ross Greenburg, the president of HBO Sports, doesn’t think a fight between IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (54-3, 48 KO’s) and unbeaten Russian challenger Alexander Povetkin (19-0, 14 KO’s) registers with boxing fans in the United States, according to news from the Los Angeles Times.. Greenburg said last week that he wasn’t interesting in showing the Klitschko brothers to show to U.S. fans because he didn’t there was an interest from fans.
In an article today, Greenburg said “Certain heavyweight fights in this country would intrigue, like [David] Haye or [Tomasz] Adamek were to fight Klitschko, we’d be in the business. We only want big fights that intrigue the American public. I don’t feel like the Klitschko-Povetkin fight, in Germany on a six-hour delay, register in this country.”
In fairness to Greenburg, he’s probably right about the Klitschko-Povetkin not being a fight that U.S. boxing fans would be hugely interested to see in big numbers. Povetkin hasn’t been active against 1st tier heavyweights in at least two years and hasn’t been fighting in the U.S. Additionally; no one gives Povetkin much if any chance at beating Wladimir, so it’s not likely a lot of fans would want to tune in to a mismatch of this kind.
However, Adamek would be about just as bad a mismatch as the Klitschko-Povetkin fight, and it may, at the end of the day, turn out to be a much worse fight to watch unless you’re into watching Adamek get bounced around on the canvas like a basketball. At 6’1”, he’s far too short for Wladimir and his in and out style of fighting will likely be an epic failure against Wladimir.
Adamek has a lot of Polish boxing fans on the East coast of the United States who will tune in to see him fight Wladimir, if he ever gets to that point. However, it’s not going to be a huge fight and certainly not a competitive fight. The Haye-Klitschko fight is obviously one that will interest boxing fans, but only ones that have heard of Haye. He’s totally unknown in the U.S. among casual boxing fans because he’s fought almost exclusively in the UK.
A fight between Haye and Wladimir has the markings of a mismatch similar to Wladimir’s recent destruction of American heavyweight Eddie Chambers last March. Haye, 6’3”, is too short and too timid to do much against Wladimir. It’s a fight that would interest hardcore boxing fans, but probably be a hopelessly one-sided fight.
Haye’s narrow win over Nikolay Valuev last November pretty much gave fans an indication of how good Haye is as a heavyweight. He’s much better as a cruiserweight than as a heavyweight, in my view, and will probably have issues if he’s put in with the better heavyweights in the division before Wladimir gets to him. The problem with Wladimir and his brother WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko is that they’re just too good for the division, and it doesn’t make for interesting fights to see them easily defeat one fighter after another.
It would be the same thing if they were fighting in the lower weight classes. If they were to walk through all the biggest stars in the sport like butter, Greenburg would probably not want to show them even against the biggest stars, not when the chances are they would knock them all out without even being hit. That’s a compliment, really, because it shows how good they are.
It also shows how inept the heavyweights are in the United States right now. There’s no one to compete with the Klitschkos right now and the last American heavyweight – Chris Arreola – that HBO showed against one of the Klitschko brother was destroyed in 10 one-sided rounds by Vitali last year.
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