By Dan Ambrose: There’s a reason why WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (44-2, 40 KO’s) struggled so badly to defeat British heavyweight Dereck Chisora last February in Munich. Vitali, 41, appears to have lost a lot of his power and what little hand speed he ever had. He’s always been slow, but he’s even slower now, and his stamina has also taken a big hit.

Vitali has picked out #7 WBC Manuel Charr (21-0, 11 KO’s) to fight on September 8th in what could be the last bout of Vitali’s career at the Olimpiyskiy, in Moscow, Russia. Vitali could fight one more time beyond this bout, but that really comes down to how well he performances against a very beatable Charr. Under normal circumstances, a younger Vitali would make easy work of the 27-year-old Charr, because he’s very slow and has struggled to beat even 3rd tier opposition.

Charr’s ranking is clearly greatly inflated by the World Boxing Council, and he’s someone that really should be still in the prospect stage ranked in the 2nd tier. However, the WBC has given the German based Charr a high ranking, and Vitali obviously has picked him out because he’s well known to Germans. Charr probably isn’t well known to Russians, but that doesn’t matter because this is Vitali’s first fight in Russia and fans will come see the fight just to have the chance to see Klitschko fight for the first time.

Vitali’s lack of power will mean that Charr will be able to stick around a lot longer than Vitali may have wanted him to. Vitali is strictly a volume puncher at this stage in his career, and he’ll be trying to make Charr miss as much as possible. It’s going to work to some extent, but Charr is a young guy and he’s not going to fall apart from getting hit by Vitali’s arm punches. Charr is going to be able to land a lot of punches in this fight, and Vitali could find himself in a situation where he’ll have to tough it out like he did in his last bout against Chisora.