By William Mackay: IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko has picked perhaps the worst challenger to fight since he first captured his IBF title in 2006. On December 10th, Wladimir will be fighting 39-year-old Jean Marc Mormeck at the ESPRIT arena, Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany.

The fight is largely seen as a mismatch, and Wladimir has received a ton of criticism already for picking a guy as small and overmatched as Mormeck. This is Wladimir’s baby, the fight he really wanted for some reason despite how awful Mormeck has looked in his three fights at the heavyweight level.

“I know I go into every fight as the favorite but I also know that every opponent will be prepared to be at their best against me,” Wladimir said to thesun.co.uk. “Mormeck is one of the most experienced opponents I’ve ever faced. He has already competed in numerous world title fights, he’s technically strong, has excellent boxing skills and fights extremely intelligently. To underestimate him would be fatal.”

Do you think by “experienced,” Wladimir is using code to say Mormeck is old? This just has a feel to it like Wladimir is going to try and sell a mismatch to the public by talking about how good Mormeck used to be. I really don’t think Wladimir is up to the job. It will take a real snake oil sales man to convince boxing fans that the Klitschko-Mormeck fight will be an interesting one.

Mormeck defeated Virgil Hill for the WBA cruiserweight title way back in 2002, defending the belt four times before losing it to O’Neil Bell in a 10th round TKO loss in January 2006. Mormeck then avenged his defeat against Bell by defeating him by a close 12 round decision to capture his WBA belt and win the WBC title in March 2007. But after that, Mormeck was stopped by David Haye in the 7th round in November 2007.

I get the feeling that Wladimir is going to spent his time trying to build up Mormeck before and now and the fight time on December 10th instead of tearing the guy down. I think Wladimir pretty has to pump up Mormeck, because no one else will. If Wladimir wants to attract a lot of interest in this fight, he’s going to have to convince the casual boxing fans that Mormeck is still a threat. Not sure how Wladimir will do that with just words because anyone with interest in this fight will take a look at Mormeck’s resume, note his advanced age of 39, and see that he’s not exactly been a busy fighter in the past four years in facing less than dangerous threats since being stopped by Haye.