By Dan Ambrose: 41-year-old WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (44-2, 40 KO’s) is coming off one of his worst performances of his career last February in a 12 round decision victory over Dereck Chisora. Although Vitali won the fight by a fairly wide decision, he was completely gassed on and clearly bothered by Chisora’s relentless attacks.

Vitali will now be defending his World Boxing Council title against what some boxing fans see as a younger version of Chisora in unbeaten Manuel Charr (21-0, 11 KO’s) on September 8th at the Olimpiyskiy, in Moscow, Russia. Charr, 27, isn’t a spectacular fighter, far from in fact. but he’s young, he can hit hard and he’s got the same kind of relentless attack going for him that Chisora did. Vitali suffered an injury early on against Chisora when he hurt his left shoulder.

Those kinds of injuries happen to older fighters especially when they’re being forced to fight hard by a younger fighter with good power like Chisora. We could see Vitali’s shoulder problem flare up again on him if Charr can put make Vitali fight hard. This is the same shoulder that Vitali tore up years ago in his loss to Chris Byrd in 2000. So there’s some history behind his recent injury, and Charr can bring that injury back to surface if he can really take the fight to the big Ukrainian.

Vitali already has one foot outside of the ring already with him running for a parliamentary seat in the October elections in Ukraine. If Vitali wins the election it’s thought that he’ll retire from boxing and devote his time on political career. The fact that Vitali is thinking about retiring could hurt him in this fight against Charr, because a fighter has to have entire mental focus on each fight, especially when they get old like Vitali is now.

You can’t have an old, injury plagued fighter like Vitali coming into a fight thinking about his political career. That’s how you get beat. I think Charr has a real chance of winning this fight and sending Vitali into retirement with a loss.