I rank Wladimir as a great heavyweight, one of fifteen that have ever lived, but I think Dempsey might have beaten him with that elusive, rhythm-breaking style?
Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko have suffered a bit of a mauling on Boxing.com in recent weeks, apparently triggered by Wladimir Klitschko?s own mauling of Alexander Povetkin in Russia this October. What it is that irritated people about Wladimir?s defeat of his nearest competitor for the world heavyweight Kingship, his nineteenth win in a row, his sixteenth successive defense of one of the many straps he has accumulated over the course of the nine years he has fought unbeaten, was the manner in which he achieved it.
I have no problem with that.
I have no problem with that because it is a matter of taste, and Wladimir?s victory over Povetkin?worth more than twenty million dollars to the world?s heavyweight champion?was nothing if not unpalatable. Reporting that evening for Boxing.com was Adam Berlin, a published author and a man who writes as well about boxing as anyone I know. Nevertheless, I was more than a little concerned to read his remark that ?writers will recount the fight round by round. But it?s not necessary. One round represents every round, give or take some less than dramatic knockdowns.?
Whilst I found Adam?s contention that we ?saw a sloppy fight? and ?felt nothing? reasonable?though I never watch one of Wladimir?s fights without feeling, for reasons I will touch upon later?I found his remark about why a round-by-round report was unnecessary, namely the supposed sameness of each round, objectionable (not least because I had published one!). I felt that this was disrespectful, not only to Wladimir Klitschko who produced a beautiful jabbing display in the tenth, late in the fight for such precision, but more than that to Alexander Povetkin for if, as I wrote in my Boxing.com coverage for that fight, ?heart is the greatest attribute to which a fighter can lay claim, then Povetkin was a great opponent indeed, for in the eighth he showed as much as any heavyweight who has stepped into the ring.? No, there were things that happened in that fight that were worthy of any writer?s specific attention.
Then again, Adam was very reasonably writing about his own distaste for Wladimir, and crucially?this must be stressed?was not hiding behind any pretence of objectivity. ?Wladimir Klitschko had his hand raised for the nineteenth time in a row since his loss to Lamon Brewster in 2004,? read the first words of his coverage, ?how sad.? Whether or not Adam?s sadness was deepened by Klitschko?s finally establishing a new heavyweight lineage in this fight by defeating, for the first time, the #2 contender whilst himself ranked at #1, is not known, but it is important to acknowledge that this was the case. Since the retirement of Lennox Lewis, the heavyweight depths have been dominated by a two-headed shark, Wladimir handling one bank of contenders, Vitali the other. Whilst this is an astonishing familial feat, it did in fact hamstring both of them in the sense that their inability to meet one another due to blood prevented either establishing a new lineage by spilling one another?s.
Now, Wladimir, for the first time, has his own established identity. Like it or not, he is a part of the same lineage as Jack Johnson, Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali. That is a powerful identifying tool which finally separates him from his semi-retired and unranked brother, Vitali.
I was surprised then when Mike Casey published his intriguingly titled We Are the Hollow Men on Boxing.com last week, a detailed look at both Klitschko brothers and how they compare to past champions. I consider Mike to be the greatest working historian and it would not be an exaggeration to name him as being amongst my inspirations to writing about boxing, but having said that, I was shocked by some of the things he wrote about Wladimir Klitsckho, and intend to explain why.
Mike?s opening premise, that the Klitschko brothers?or Wladimir, who I am primarily interested in here?is not amongst the greatest heavyweights of all time. Again, I do not see that as a problem. I do believe in the power of the list to describe what has been in boxing, but I also consider the top ten at heavyweight to be the most malleable of any division, and once you are outside of the top two you can order the great ones pretty much in any way you like, within reason. Seeing Wladimir listed at #8 wouldn?t upset me any more than seeing him way down at #18.
My choice for the #3 berth, Rocky Marciano, is a fighter that comes out of We Are Hollow Men without a scratch, in fact he is the fighter Mike choses to use as a stick to beat Wladimir Klitschko where punching power is concerned.
?Would Wlad?s big punch save him?? writes Mike concerning Wladimir?s chances against former greats of the ring. ?What big punch? This is another fallacy I hear all the time from [Klitschko admirers]. ?Wlad is a terrific puncher.? No he isn?t. He is a hard puncher but is a primarily competent bludgeoner.?
This, I must disagree with in the strongest possible terms.
Chris Byrd disagrees too. ?He punches so hard,? stresses Byrd who fought, amongst others, Vitali Klitschko, the monstrous David Tua and Ike Ibeabuchi. Phil Jackson, who shared a ring with both Lennox Lewis and Wladimir Klitschko, is clear that Wladimir hits notably harder than Lennox, ?with both hands. You could feel it.? Wlad, is amongst the very hardest punchers since Mike Tyson.
Mike argues however, powerfully, that boxing is in a downwards and being the best of a generation does not mean what it once did. This is very possibly true, but it is also true that power is primarily a matter of function, not multi-dimensional skill, like boxing itself. What I mean by this is that it is possible to judge, by eye, that Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis and yes, Wladimir Klitschko, punch with the correct form and in a similar fashion to a fighter like Sonny Liston or Ezzard Charles. Whilst it is true that the voodoo that makes up the soup of power-punching is not an exact science, the late, great Joe Rein had something to say about the laws of physics and how they acted upon boxers.
?When the Marquis of Queensberry divided boxing into different weight classes,? Joe tells us in the publicly available video footage that survives him, ?it was intended to make the competition fairer. It?s all about the laws of physics.? In short, an object?a fighter, say?with a mass of 185 pounds over which to distribute energy introduced to his frame by an overhand right has less mass over which to discharge that energy than a 240-pound fighter. Punch resistance is even less directly explicable by science than power, so this is not a hard and fast rule, but nevertheless it is a relevant one?it is why an iron-jawed middleweight like Dick Tiger, unstoppable at 160 pounds, was knocked unconscious by Bob Foster at 175 pounds. The bigger the man, the more total energy it is possible for him to summon in a correctly delivered punch.
Mike might be right in suggesting that close to 220 pounds may be the best weight for a combination of elasticity and power in a heavyweight, which is why I was so stunned that he picked the 185-pound Marciano to demonstrate his point concerning Wladimir?s limitations as a puncher.
?Around 1955 Rocky Marciano had his punch measured at a USA military installation,? writes Mike, ?where it is believed that the test was conducted on a ballistic pendulum. Rocky achieved a score of 925 foot-pounds whilst wearing twelve ounce boxing gloves.?
This is indeed impressive.
Before his recent bout with Francesco Pianeta, Wladimir took a similar test and landed, according to Boxen.com, with around 1500 foot-pounds of pressure, around a third more than Rocky.
By Mike?s own standards, Wladimir is the harder puncher.
Personally, this doesn?t mean all that much to me. Boxing doesn?t recreate men aiming their best blows at a static opponent, the source for Rocky?s number is not good and the mathematics used to calculate Wladimir?s numbers are under question?but the Ukrainian?s higher numbers appeal to common sense, too. Wladimir has more energy to introduce according to the laws of physics, and has only a slightly lower knockout percentage than Marciano, despite the fact that the Rock was the most aggressive heavyweight King in ring history and Wladimir is the most cautious.
I agree with what Mike had to say about that caution. Wladimir himself acknowledges that he is ?not a natural fighter? and that, rather, he has become one. I also agree that Wlad ?always looks like a man who expects the roof to fall in on him at any given moment?he is not a confident, dominant fighter.?
When I said that I never watch a Wladimir fight ?without feeling? as Adam Berlin does, this perceived uncertainty is what I was referring to. I don?t enjoy the grabbing style that he deployed against Povetkin any more than the next man, although as Adam is shrewd enough to intimate, it is a problem for the referee not the offending fighter and ?a win is a win.? But I do enjoy his fragility. As I feel I?ve shown, this is a heavyweight with one-punch knockout power but also one who, as Mike identifies, is terribly, terribly vulnerable. For me, this engenders within any Wladimir Klitschko fight a matter of urgency and drama that may not be played out physically in the ring but exists perpetually. That is interesting to me.
It is also interesting to me that Wladimir is the first heavyweight champion to have his style designed in total around his weaknesses. His control of range is a rampart built to protect his vulnerable chin. His control of pace is an acknowledgement of his possible stamina issues. His defensive taint is the final uncomfortable reminder of the seeming panic attack that beset him whenever he was hit?until that keystone 2005 fight with Sam Peter.
The eleventh round of that fight, in which Wladimir was dumped on the canvas three times, was the ?toughest round? Emanuel Steward had ever seen one of his fighters survive in all his fifty plus years in boxing. Think about that.
?What?s special about him,? continues Steward, who seems to have regarded this as something of a graduation night for the charge he, like Phil Jackson, regarded as a harder puncher than another of his fighters, Lennox Lewis, ?is that he has so much power in the late rounds. Lots of guys, great punchers like [Mike] Tyson, they were great in the early rounds but very seldom in the later rounds?he?s had the power to go out after being down three times with Sam Peter and he had him out on his feet with a single punch, a left hook.?
Mike Casey sees, of course, that Wladimir improved under the tutelage of Steward, but is keen to quantify it.
?Manny, for all his duty-bound praise of Wlad, must have known that the improvement could only be finite.?
This is obviously true, but the degree of that finite improvement can hardly be exaggerated. Nobody is better placed to testify to that than Chris Byrd and Lamon Brewster, two men who faced Wladimir both before and after Steward?s tuition was allowed to take hold.
?He was able to maintain the jab,? says Brewster, putting his finger on what he feels was the definitive change in Wladimir?s capabilities. ?He was able to maintain the jab, whereas the last time I knew his jab would be busy but I was able get past it, in the second fight the jab was better. He had an awesome jab?I felt I was the same Lamon Brewster in both fights but sometimes, somebody has a better night [than you].
For Brewster, the changes were so vast as to the difference between a devastating loss and a devastating win. Byrd, too, describes a different fighter:
?Emanuel Steward really changed him ?made him stand up. He uses height and reach now. Not aggressive, going for the knockout [like before]. He systematically breaks you down with the jab?[I] got in the ring with him and you?re like, man, this isn?t the same guy.?
Still, although Wladimir has not been beaten since Steward moulded him into the best in the world, it is still reasonable to ask about Wladimir?s past losses:
?Steward?[taught Wladimir] how to better protect the chin that had been shattered by Corrie Sanders and Lamon Brewster?Does anyone seriously believe they would have knocked out Dempsey, Louis, Marciano, Liston, Foreman or Ali??
The obvious answer is ?no?, but it must also be pointed out that many great champions have embarrassing losses during their careers and are not excluded from greatness as a result.
Liston was beaten by a clowning light-heavyweight named Marty Marshall and knocked cold by Marty Marshall. Dempsey was knocked out in a single round by journeyman Jim Flynn and outpointed by an obese former flyweight named Willy Meehan. I think that it is very possible that both Corrie Sanders and Lamon Brewster would have beaten all of the above, but if that is not true, nor is it the point.
The point is, whilst I wouldn?t expect the prime version of these men to lose to the fighters who beat Wladimir, I wouldn?t expect the em>prime version of Wladimir to lose to them either. Past and pre-prime? Sure, Dempsey, Foreman, Liston, any one of them could lose to either Brewster or Sanders.
And yes, this is a weak era for heavyweight boxing, but it is unlikely to be as weak as the 105-pound opposition that has made Ricardo Lopez ?great,? and nor did Joe Louis?s ludicrously titled ?Bum of the Month? club hamper his rise to the absolute heights. The lack of resistance amongst Carlos Zarate?s opposition was a bugbear for the press of his time but his domination is now seen for what it was?domination. A lack of great opposition can be accounted for every time by longevity and consistency. That is proven.
What I fear for our shared future is that whilst this argument rages on and on, Wladimir just keeps on winning and those that have set their stall out against him will continue to ignore the fact, for reasons that don?t make sense.
As to the notion that smaller heavyweights are better, we shall see?I look forwards to the domination by modern boxing of another 215-pound fighter with baited breath, but I suspect that even those who protest otherwise know deep down that baring the visitation of the occasional Tysonesque phenomenon, those days are done. Mike is right when he points out the ludicrousness of our being told that ?[modern] heavyweights?would have knocked seven bells out of their predecessors? but all other things being equal, size used properly is a fight winner, inarguably, and devaluing that truism because it is rarely aesthetically pleasing when it occurs is verging upon intellectual dishonesty.
Wladimir, like Lewis, is a prototype for the bigger heavyweights who work to maintain a level of elasticity and fluidity. Like Lewis, he has beaten everyone, bigger, smaller, puncher, boxer and he has done it with relative ease. Would he beat the great fighters of the past? I don?t know. I picked Ricky Hatton to beat Manny Pacquiao, I?m not the man to ask. I do know that Wladimir is listed as five inches taller, four inches rangier and at their respective bests around 50 pounds heavier than Jack Dempsey. I know that those are very singular advantages. But I also know that we?ll never know. For all that Mike can present a serious case for Jack, there are people that can present a serious case for Wladimir. Nobody will ever be ?right.?
What is known is that Wladimir has been number one for a number of years and is likely to remain so for a number of years. He has established lineage, he has won sixty-one fights, he has scored fifty-one knockouts. He has not been beaten since his prime began, and there are no signs he will be beaten now it is over. There are very, very few heavyweight champions who can lay claim to these raw statistics and exactly none who are active, fighting, on your television next year and the year after.
There is not a heavyweight champion who can be named that was not undercelebrated for cultural reasons during his own era, aside perhaps (and rather bizarrely) from Jim Jeffries who was almost universally lauded by the time of his retirement. I suspect that just as Ali and Johnson were undervalued by a white overclass and Tunney and Holmes were undervalued by the black underclass, so Klitschko is undervalued by an older generation and by North America generally. ?Boxing? heavyweight champions such as Holmes, Tunney and Corbett, never go down as well as their slugging counterparts, and naturally enough, those that are raised on foreign soil are less well-loved than those grown at home.
The current boxing heavyweight champion, Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko, was asked after his total domination of the #2 heavyweight Alexander Povetkin what he thought American trainer Emanuel Steward would have made of his performance.
?Just go and knock this motherfucker out,? Wlad guessed his mentor would have told him. ?Especially during rounds seven and eight. But,? he added, ?I know what I?m doing in the ring. I didn?t get hit once.?
He did get hit, perhaps twice, but you know what he means.
For those who care, I want to say that firstly I do rank Wladimir as a great heavyweight, one of fifteen that have ever lived, and secondly that I think Jack Dempsey might have beaten him with that elusive, rhythm-breaking style.
In my opinion the second point is debatable.
The first point is not.
