Decline of the heavyweight division summed up by Klitschko Vs Chisora

By Boxing News - 12/02/2010 - Comments

By Dallan O’ Donnell: The year was 1986 the venue, Las Vegas Nevada. A young Mike Tyson was about to enter the ring to fight for his first world title. The fight lasted only 2 rounds with Tyson winning by TKO to become the youngest ever champion at 20 years and 4 months.

Tyson went on to become an undisputed champion at a time when the heavyweight division was the cornerstone of the boxing world. A throwback to the era’s of some other boxing greats and former undisputed heavyweight legends such as Floyd Patterson, Rocky Marciano and Muhammad Ali.

But since those days in the 50’s, 60’s and 80’s and even up until the retirement of Lennox Lewis in 2003 the heavyweight division has been taken over by the lighter divisions. Mainly because of Manny Pacquaio, Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather and the lack of interest in the heavyweights as there are no great rivalries to follow.

Two brothers from the Ukraine, now fighting out of Germany, are the dominators over the weak field in the division holding all but one title which belongs to an Englishman. The klitschkos are the most feared heavyweights in the world today. David Haye is the aforementioned Englishman who holds the WBA crown. All three are perhaps unfortunate to belong to an era that has no great challenges.

Vitali, the elder brother of Wladamir, is ready to retire at the end of 2010 despite not being able to agree on the terms to fight David Haye. He has called Haye out and said he would agree to a 50-50 purse split but yet Haye is waiting on his brother, Wladamir.

Haye has recently fought Audley Harrison which says enough in itself. Although i thought Audley was way over matched for that bout, and we would not see the likes of that kind of mismatch again, Wladamir agreed to fight Derek Chisora. Some worldwide boxing fans were no doubt asking themselves, who?

But Chisora is undefeated, like Tyson was going in for his world title shot. Chisora has big punching power, like Tyson. But that’s where the similarities come to an end Chisora does not have the same ability as Mike had. He doesn’t have that edge.

Chisora has had 14 professional fights with 9 KO’s on his record which may lead you to believe that he is a future prospect still fighting at either British or European level. Sadly this is not the case. He has been given a shock world title shot. This for me is more of a mismatch than Haye- Harrison. Klitschko has an incredible record (55-3, 49 KO’s.) with knockout power, incredible hand speed and movement. This fight has come too early for Chisora.

I can’t help but believe money was involved in his decision making to take the fight. You can’t blame him for taking his chance. Both the Klitschko and Haye camps need to start negotiating to make either a Wladamir- Haye fight or Vitali- Haye fight. Either way they all need to stop with the poor matchups and for once give the fans something to look forward to in the heavyweight division.



Comments are closed.