By Tony Crooks: Let me start by saying that heavyweight champions Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko are perfect gentlemen, as one person commented on this site, they have never been in prison, they never hurt anyone, and in fact, they have been true ambassadors of the sport of boxing.
So why have they never been embraced by the British or American public and only by their own Nation of Ukraine and also by the German public? After the Soviet Union dispended, many people found solitude in various European states. People need heroes, we have our own agendas as to who they are, but that never changes the agenda.
Americans had Babe Ruth, Joe Louis, and Muhammad Ali and many others before you mention any one from American history that I missed. The British had the SAS, Lennox Lewis and Henry Cooper, not that SAS has anything to do with boxing, having said that, I don’t want to hear that the Delta Force is any better for that matter. The Ukraine’s heroes are the Klitschkos as are their native home of Germany that has embraced them.
This is where their popularity lies. We are only interested when one of the K brothers is fighting someone from our own country. If Deontay Wilder was fighting Wladimir tonight for the title, the American networks would be fighting each other for the coverage, When Haye fought Wladimir it was a massive fight in the UK. The K Brothers are good fighters, there have been a couple of questionable losses for both of them, having said that, they are still around today and haven’t been beaten since.
Vitali had one really hard fight against Lennox Lewis. I was at that fight and I honestly say this hand on heart, I thought Lennox was in serious trouble, however, whatever the outcome he found a way to win, yes it was messy, but a win is a win. I thought that Vitali was winning that fight. That’s boxing; Lewis knew that it was time to quit after that fight.
Let me put this into perspective, If you ran up a hill for twenty years without feeling out of breath, your legs feel good and at the end of it you feel on top of the world, you would never stop that feeling would you?, then one day you run up that hill and you are gasping for breath, your legs feel like lead and you don’t feel good anymore.
Are you a coward for not carrying on or are you sensible enough to listen to when your body tells you enough is enough?
All in all, the Klitschko Brothers are good boxers, the best in history, probably no, but certainly the best of this era, and until the young guns come through to prove themselves or the Klitschkos get tired of running up that hill, we will just have to wait and see.
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