In His Best Performance Against His Best Opponent, Wladimir Klitschko Becomes Heavyweight Champion Of The World

Written by Tim Starks | 20 June 2009

Saturday on ESPN Classic, Wladimir Klitschko became the Ring magazine heavyweight champion of the world -- the most legitimate of the many belts that litter boxing -- by stopping his best opponent, Ruslan Chagaev, in what was his best performance to date. Love or hate Klitschko and his methodical, clinical but dominant style, he's apparently here to stay, and if he's here to stay, we might as well be moderately pleased by the fact that he's the legitimate "man" now, what with clarity in the heavyweight division being a praiseworthy thing. At age 33, he's probably not yet hit his peak, and it looks like, absent the outside shot of a loss to a crazy fast mega-puncher named David Haye or someone who gets lucky or someone who hasn't appeared on the scene yet or a fight with his brother Vitali, he's going to be "the man" for a long while.

I've always understood, if not be thrilled by, the reason Klitschko fights the way he does. Three KO losses made Klitschko adapt his style to one of extreme caution, but I've always thought he could show a little more abandon than he does. Indeed, in the 8th round, after softening up Chagaev as Charmin-soft as he could get him, he opened up, realizing the favorable risk/reward ratio of getting hurt by a guy who didn't have much left vs. the reward of scoring a stoppage win. He unloaded every crunching right hand he could in the 9th, and at the end of the round, the referee -- apparently at the urging of Chagaev's corner if not Chagaev himself -- said enough was enough. This is the kind of inching progress I'd like to encourage of Klitschko, because when Klitschko gets offensive-minded, you have to admit: It's nasty awesome. If only he'd do it more.

Chagaev never really had a chance, and I say that without any negativity toward Klitschko. The Klitschko brothers are the best, and there's a huge drop-off in the division behind them. Chagaev was ranked #3, behind Wladimir and Vitali, and as such The Ring decided to make the fight for the heavyweight championship that had been vacant since 2004 , when Vitali temporarily retired. There are some who are encouraging everyone not to recognize Wladimir as the real champion since ideally, the vacancy would have been filled by the #1 and #2 men in the division. I'm sympathetic, but the magazine followed its own rules in filling its vacancy, so set aside those doubts. Wladimir's the champion. And forget about the fallacy that the "champion" is always the same as "the best." Sometimes, a terrible fighter becomes "the champion" by knocking out the previous champion on a lucky punch. "The champion" is the man who beats the champion, or, in this case, who takes the vacant belt. "The champion" is not the man who would win an esteem contest. Vitali is, in my opinion, the best heavyweight. But Wladimir has earned the right to be called the champion, no scare quotes.

Anyhow, Klitschko did what he usually does, which is, A., jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab. Then, B. big right hand. He threw one punch that wasn't a jab in the 1st round. One. When Chagaev charged in, he stepped back, pushed him aside or tied him up, depending on how Chagaev came at him. Chagaev did land the occasional straight left, and he landed his best punch in the 7th after the bell.

Otherwise, he got absolutely painted. In the 2nd round, he tasted Klitschko's power for real, going down for the first time in his career on a 1-2. At the end of the 4th, he did that walk of shame that every Klitschko opponent does at some point, shaking his head and thinking, no doubt, "He's tall and he's good and nothing I'm doing is working and nothing will." Chagaev never gave up, but he did back up at times, and things got worse when a cut that dribbled open in the 7th sliced up badly in the 8th, spilling traces of hepatitis B all over the white McFit canvas. By the 9th, Chagaev was in 1-2 la-la land and the only question was whether he was going to get knocked out by a punch in the 10th or someone would intervene and stop the fight. Klitschko never had that panicky look in his eyes that he sometimes gets when he gets hit, and he was more fluid, and he treated the best opponent of his career the way he treats everyone who's inferior to him, which is to beat him with ease.

What's next for Klitschko is, presumably, a mandatory title defense of one of his alphabet belts against Alexander Povetkin, who's young and hard-hitting enough to have a theoretical chance -- a better one than Chagaev ever did -- of landing that lucky shot on that shaky Klitschko chin. After that, who knows? He's said he thinks Haye needs to get back in line, which, frankly, I don't blame Klitschko for saying. Haye kept him waiting more than he wanted to wait, and then pulled out with an injury, and he used his big mouth to insult Klitschko in every way he could for the last year or so. I do hope we get Wlad-David someday, but Vitali is saying he wants a piece of David now, and Vitali's schedule has freed up after winning a court case saying he doesn't have to fight Oleg Maskaev next. If Vitali gets Haye, I don't think Haye wins that fight, because Vitali can take a shot. All of which presumes Haye could even land a shot on either Klitschko, which is no given -- it's just that he has unmatched speed in the division, and he really can punch, so it's more plausible to me that Haye could do it than someone like Chagaev, who has only above average speed and had very little chance of hurting Wladimir even if he connected cleanly.

If Wladimir doesn't fight Haye anytime soon, I don't think he loses anytime soon, and, again, a loss to Haye is a crapshoot. That means the champion is almost assuredly going to have a reign. I'm not in the pro-Wladimir camp when it comes to what he does in the ring, but I'm trying to look on the bright side. Wladimir has never shied away from a challenge, and I like a boxer who takes all comers. With that body carved out of marble, he looks like a real heavyweight in an era of a lot of flabby bellies. He's got an outgoing personality, willing as he is to discuss his erections on Conan O'Brien or talk about wanting to visit America because "I want to see black people. I want to see palms." I know some boxing fans put down boxers who are smart outside of the ring, but I love it -- give me a chess-playing boxer with a Ph.D any day. He's got that totally awesome Soviet villain nickname, "Dr. Steelhammer." He has a nice charitable streak. There. I'm looking on the bright side, see? Because the picture is, all in all, ever so slightly brighter for the heavyweights today, with a real champion who has clarified matters.