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UPON US!
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All Those Champions
--and No Excitement!
of TheColumnists.com
They say, "How the heavyweight division goes, so goes boxing." If that's true, we boxing fans are soon going to find ourselves being flushed down the toilet with the sport we love.
Case in point: On Saturday night, two heavyweight championship fights were televised--opposite each other on rival channels. Like, did anybody care?
In the fight on HBO, giant specimen Wladimir Klitschko from Ukraine, the IBF, IBO and WBO heavyweight champ, won every round against former two-time world heavyweight champ Hassim Rahman, an American despite his Muslim name, and the referee called a halt to the one-sided punchout in the seventh round.
Meanwhile, on the Versus cable network, James "Lights Out" Toney, a middleweight who has gluttoned himself into the heavyweight division and entered the ring with fat rolls hanging over his boxing trunks, won a disputed--and incredibly dull--decision over Pres Oquendo, the human tomato can. That means Toney is the fabled NABO heavyweight champ. I think those letters stand for North American Body Odor.
If this dazzling display of heavyweight boxing charisma wasn't enough for you, you can wait until Dec. 20 when 46-year-old former champ Evander Holyfield steps into the ring as the challenger against yet another world heavyweight champ-- a 7-foot tall escapee from Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey named Nikolai Valuev.
Holyfield had to go overseas to find a boxing commission willing to clear him as an opponent for Valuev. Not that Valuev is such a powerful puncher. I believe the real danger to Holyfield is that Valuev's enormous feet will get tangled and he'll fall on Evander and crush him.
There are still other champs out there, I think. I believe another giant Ukranian, Vitali Klitschko, holds some crown or other. He is the older brother of Wladimir, so don't get all excited waiting for those two to meet in the ring.
The two Klitschko brothers are the best of the bunch, but they're rather dull European-style fighters who are only interesting when they knock somebody's block off. They seldom get into brawls. They poke their left jabs into the eyes of their opponents all night, which is about as much fun as watching your kid brother try to stick a broomstick in a neighborhood kid's ear. Fortunately, both brothers also have weak chins, so they get knocked out every once in awhile by some tomato can's wild punch.
Valuev is a freak show character. He couldn't stand up to any of the great heavyweights of the past. Rocky Marciano might have been nearly two feet shorter than Valuev, but I'll bet he could have knocked Nikolai's kneecap into the third row of seats at the Garden.
Toney was once a very impressive fighter. Once he porked past super-middleweight, he began to look like a candidate for a tallow rendering plant rather than a prizefighter. Look at that picture of him atop this column and weep. For that matter, check out the picture of Valuev. Didn't we all see him playing a mutant in a Roger Corman sci-fi flick of the 1950s? No, well, maybe not.
I pray for the day when some guy will come walking out of the shadows and become the lawn mower that will trim all these jumbo characters down to size. I'd like him to be just a shade under 6 feet tall, but somebody who can at least pretend to bob and weave a bit and punch real hard to the body. I'd like him to be so good that when he gets into the ring with one of these dudes, we'll at least read about it in some sports section somewhere and realize a REAL heavyweight championship bout is under way.
©2008 by Ron Miller. This column first posted Dec. 15, 2008.
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