This weekend features the biggest heavyweight fight since Lennox Lewis retired. In terms of public interest it is the biggest since Lewis fought Tyson in 2002. The highly hyped, obviously talented young knockout artist versus the veteran kingpin of the division in front of 90,000 screaming fans, a passing of the torch or a reset of the status quo? This is part one of a three part series of articles I will be publishing to breakdown the fight. Tonight we ponder the legacy of Wladimir Klitschko and in what ways this fight does or does not matter to it.
With eighteen consecutive successful heavyweight title defenses, Wladimir Klitschko successfully defended a heavyweight belt in one reign as many times as his young superstar opponent has fought professionally. In total he has fought in 29 heavyweight title bouts in which he has gone 27-2 with 19 KOs, an entire career’s worth of fights fought exclusively for legitimate belts. Saturday’s bout will move Wladimir into a tie with Virgil Hill for fifth place in the all time rankings of fighters who have fought in the most title fights, truly an elite accomplishment in the pantheon of boxing history even in the four belt era.
With that said, he has also fought in one of the weaker heavyweight eras that we have seen in the sport. For a large part of his dominant reign the best opponent for Wladimir would have been his brother Vitali, but that of course was never going to happen. What Wladimir was left with were opponents that history is likely to largely forget. This very well could be due to the looming presence of the Klitschko brothers hovering over the division. We don’t get to know what Samuel Peter or David Haye gets to become without their dominance, for example. In the reality we experienced Wladimir’s reign almost felt oppressive at times. When it finally ended last November against Tyson Fury that dreadful fight was almost met with a collective sigh of relief.
Wladimir’s best wins were probably Alexander Povetkin and David Haye, both elite heavyweights at the time that went into the ring and didn’t stand a chance. Haye seemed like he didn’t try, Povetkin was dropped four times. Knocking down Alexander Povetkin four times sounds like an exciting affair on paper, but in truth it was another poor fight in a long line of dreary Wladimir Klitschko bouts in which he spent more time clinching than actually fighting. The Haye fight was even worse.
Wladimir Klitschko fights have historically gone one of two ways with a couple exceptions. Typically Wladimir has been able to keep his opponents at range behind a piston like jab. From there he fights a slow, safe fight while he waits to eventually drop a single bomb that ends the fight. These fights are uneventful until a sudden conclusion, but they are definitely preferred to the fights in which the opponent has tried.
In the rare fights where an opponent has actually charged and risked consciousness against his very real power, Wladimir has tied them up in a clinch. Again, again, and again. These are tedious affairs that can be very difficult to get through as a viewer, but it is also the correct strategy for the Ukrainian as taught to him by legendary trainer Emmanuel Steward. Wladimir had a simple problem. When large men punched him, he was stopped, and he wasn’t good enough at stopping this from happening in three separate fights before his long, dominant reign.
I do want to challenge the idea that Wladimir Klitschko has a notably poor chin, however. He certainly does not have the cast iron jaw of his brother, but Corrie Sanders, for example, could put anyone out if given the opportunity to land. In both the Purity and later avenged Brewster fights, he succumbed as much to exhaustion as he did to punches. The Brewster fight was particularly strange as Wladimir appeared to just crash out of no where pretty early in a fight he was easily winning. He was also down three times in an otherwise routine win over Sam Peter, but two of the calls were questionable and Peter is a big puncher anyway.
Wladimir’s chin is not really what was failing him, but instead it was his stamina and defense. A slow, safety first approach gifted from the late, great Emmanuel Steward may have stopped his fights from continuing to be entertaining, but it also made him the era dominant heavyweight that he became. Anthony Joshua certainly hits hard enough to KO probably anyone, almost certainly a 41 year old Wladimir, but will he be given the opportunity to?
If Joshua is able to stop Klitschko, does it matter to Wladimir’s resume? I honestly don’t think so. Anthony Joshua will be defined by this fight going forward, so for Wladimir’s legacy this fight is just like all the others. If Joshua wins, he is the next big thing and Wladimir simply was aged out of greatness like so many before him. If Wladimir wins, Joshua may never really develop into a top heavyweight and therefore just go down as another also ran on a Klitschko resume like a more popular Kubrat Pulev or Calvin Brock.
What is Wladimir Klitschko’s legacy? We need to look to the early 80s for our answer. I think he slots in as a slightly lesser Larry Holmes. The Easton Assassin didn’t have the early stoppage losses. He also had bigger faded names to build his name on in Ken Norton and Muhammad Ali, whereas Klitschko had the likes of Ray Mercer and Chris Byrd. Yet, the similarities are remarkable. They both ruled eras where they looked so comfortably dominant that their opposition is considered lacking. They both preferred safety first styles behind a long jab when possible that could make a fight less than exciting. Does that make Tyson Fury Klitschko’s bizarro Michael Spinks? Would that then make Joshua his Mike Tyson?
I’ll talk more about how I see the actual matchup potentially playing out Friday in part three. Tomorrow we will discuss how bright Anthony Joshua’s future just might be. He is definitely in deep against Wladimir Klitschko, an all time great who we never really have treated like one simply because his reign has not excited us.
