Chagaev and Povetkin to fight for WBA regular heavyweight title

By Boxing News - 07/06/2011 - Comments

By Eric Thomas: Although IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko captured the WBA heavyweight title last weekend with a 12 round decision win over World Boxing Association heavyweight champion David Haye, the WBA has elevated Wladimir to the WBA Super world heavyweight champion and will have the WBA regular title open for top contenders Ruslan Chagaev and Alexander Povetkin to fight for it.

In other words, it will create a position where there will be two heavyweight champions for the WBA, along with the other three heavyweight champions. The WBA can do this because of some rule stating that if a champion has multiple titles, like Klitschko does, the WBA can elevate him to Super champion and then have the WBA regular available for other heavyweights to fight for it.

This allows the WBA to get more sanctioning fee money, but it obviously doesn’t help boxing because it waters down the sport by having too many heavyweight champions. Wladimir did boxing a big favor by beating WBA paper champion David Haye recently, a move that consolidated three of the titles in Wladimir’s possession while the last remaining heavyweight title, the WBC belt, is currently being held by Wladimir’s brother Vitali Klitschko.

But now the WBA is making a mess of things by having Povetkin and Chagaev fighting for the WBA regular title. They’ve done this in some of the other weight classes as well and it’s pretty disappointing because it allows a lot of guys in that don’t belong as a champion.

Chagaev previously held the WBA title years ago after beating Nikolay Valuev. However, Chagaev never really did much during his time as champ because of a lengthy illness. He was beaten by Wladimir in 2009, and hasn’t done a lot since then. Chagaev is short at 6’1”, slow and not particularly powerful.

Povetkin has failed to do anything with his career despite winning a gold medal in the 2004 Olympics for Russia. He too is short at 6’2”, and isn’t a huge puncher nor fast of hand. He and Chagaev would be better off fighting as cruiserweights where they would probably be good enough to be one of the champions. At heavyweight, they’re too small and limited to ever be much more than paper champions.



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