By Eric Thomas: If IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (55-3, 49 KOs’s) still hasn’t found an opponent for his next fight in December, he might want to consider 37-year-old former World Boxing Council cruiserweight champion Juan Carlos Gomez (48-2, 36 KO’s), who sent out a press release today saying he’s available to fight the 34-year-old Wladimir next in December.

Wladimir easily stopped former WBC heavyweight champion Samuel Peter in the 10th round earlier this month on September 11th without getting hit too much in the fight. Wladimir now wants to make a quick return on December 11th to finish out the year with one more fight. He recently had reportedly made an offer to fight unbeaten British heavyweight Derek Chisora (14-0, 9 KO’s) but there’s still no word whether Chisora’s promoter will accept the risky fight when Chisora likely has a very little chance of winning the bout.

Gomez fought Wladimir’s brother World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko in March 2009, and was stopped in the 9th round of a one-sided fight. Gomez did very little in that fight to make himself an attractive option for Wladimir, as Gomez mostly pawed with his jabs and threw slapping punches. For the most part, he mainly held his hands way out in front of him to keep Vitali from being able to throw shots. It was more of a spoiling type of fight rather than one where Gomez appeared to be actively trying to win it.

Finally, Vitali opened up with his offense in the 9th and took Gomez out with a flurry of hard shots. Since that loss, has won his last four fights against 2nd tier opposition. Gomez didn’t help himself by not fighting for an entire year after losing to Vitali. At his age, it probably wasn’t a wise thing for Gomez to throw that year away rather than working quickly to try and get ranked high enough for another title shot.

Gomez doesn’t have a lot of power and his speed seems to be diminishing with age. It’s too bad he abandoned the cruiserweight division, as he was considered to be the best fighter in the division when he held onto the WBC title for a three year period from 1998 to 2002. Back then, Gomez was lean and fast. He now weighs in the 230s and looks slightly pudgy around the middle.

As for Gomez’s chances at getting a title shot against Wladimir, I’d say there not good. Gomez isn’t ranked in the top 15 by the IBF and WBO, and there’s really no point in Wladimir fighting him with Gomez not having picked up any significant wins in the past couple of years since his 12 round decision over Vladimir Virchis in September 2008.