The difference in talent between Klitschko and the rest of the heavyweights has become one not of degree, but of kind?
Wladimir Klitschko made quick work of Bulgarian Kubrat Pulev Saturday night in Hamburg, Germany, power-punching his way to yet another one-sided victory over an overmatched opponent. This time, the Ukrainian superstar didn?t get it done with his patented teleophone-poll jab or piston-like right hand. It was his mighty left-hook that did the damage, knocking the Bulgarian down twice in the first round, causing ?The Cobra? to make more overall trips to the canvas than Rembrandt. While this challenger had plenty of pre-fight hiss, he lacked the requisite fangs and venom to effectively offset the speed and agility of Dr. Steelhammer, a dominating heavyweight superstar who has more tools for the job than Home Depot. To his credit, the Bulgarian Olympian did demonstrate an ability to recover from Klitschko?s thunderous hammer blows, until it was lights-out in the fifth round where he lay pancaked, sprawled on the deck unable to raise all but his bloodied head. To his discredit, Pulev may have set the Guinness Book of World Records for rabbit punches in a five-round stretch without a point deduction.
Truth be told, the difference in talent between the Ukrainian Goliath and the rest of the heavyweight field has become one not of degree, but of kind, to be measured in evolutionary eons or light years. Klitschko isn?t merely another scintillating star in the boxing firmament, he?s a constellation, as in The Big Dipper. Wladimir is to boxing what Secretariat was to thoroughbreds. As a veritable paragon of boxing excellence, Klitschko wasn?t born, he is an experimental mutant, an in vitro bionic specimen who escaped from an Eastern Bloc laboratory to rewrite boxing history. His PhD is in sports medicine, after all, the likely product of his own bionic research project. His nearly decade long reign of terror in the heavyweight division is the second longest, behind only the legendary Joe Louis, who relegated each vanquished opponent to his ?bum of the month club.? While Klitschko?s outgunned opponents are far from being bums, they might collectively consider undergoing a mental status exam for high-risk behavior, deemed a danger to themselves merely for stepping into the ring with him.
In a sport that has more titles than the Library of Congress, and more hefty belts than throaty Ethel Merman at Carnegie Hall, Klitschko has unified the heavyweight title in the IBO, IBF, UBO and WBA divisions. That?s what greatness does in any endeavor, unifying all that is divided into one grand harmonic convergence ? a singularity. Upon unifying titles across boxing divisions from ABC to XYZ, rumor has it that the multi-talented Ukrainian will soon set his sights on unifying the CIA, FBI and KGB, but only after brokering a media merger among HBO, ABC, CBS, NBC and the BBC. Did I forget any stray letters here?
As for the Klitschkos, not since the Wright brothers have two male sibs soared higher and farther; not since the Windsors (Harry & William) have two brothers been more regal; and not since Frank and Jesse James have two sidekicks been more notorious. Even Ringling Bros. couldn?t have conjured a two-headed championship circus act like this one. Simply put, Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko have made the lot of their opponents look vanilla, vaudevillian even, like so many bumbling Marx Brothers. While heavyweights may rejoice at their departure, boxing shall not see the likes of them again.
If Russian novelist Dostoevsky was alive today, he?d scrap The Brothers Karamazov in favor of scrawling a more magnificent tome destined to be his greatest classic? ?The Brothers Klitschko.? And why not? The Ukrainian National Post Office has recently issued a postage stamp commemorating the immortal pair, announcing that 170,000 will be printed for admiring collectors. After all, in the modern boxing era, it?s the only way I can think of that their iconic images will ever be given a sound ?licking.?
