Billy’s Boxing Blog

With the surprise pull out of David Haye due to a reported hand injury the Wladimir Klitschko heavyweight title fight and HBO date of June 20th is in serious jeopardy right now. According to a press release from Klitschko’s management, it appears the champion and his management team will be looking for a suitable replacement. Considering the fight sold some 30,000 tickets and is getting international exposure from HBO finding the right sub is not going to be easy.  

Thinking out loud, here is my personal list of fighters who could fill that void.

1. Nikolai Valuev: Valuev is in shape and should be ready to fill in on the June 20 date. Not sure what exactly is the truth about all the Chageav uproar but if ever there was a unifying fight that could easily become a marquee event it would be Klitschko and Valuev in Germany. The 30,000 ticket holders would be in for a real battle of the giants here. The problem is Valuev’s promoter, Sauerland, is going to ask for a huge chunk of change and it doesn’t appear likely they could get this one done in 2 weeks.

2. Ruslan Chagaev: If what Chagaev says is true and he is in fact healthy then he could step in and fill the void as well. Again this would be a so called unifier with Klitschko and although it is not near as attractive as a Valuev fight, it would be another fight that most would accept as a late replacement. 

3. Eddie Chambers: The only reason Eddie makes this list is because he is currently training to fight Alexander Dimentrenko on July 4th which theoretically means he should be in shape. Given how Chambers looked against Sam Peter you have to take the term “in shape” with a grain of salt.

4. Alexander Dimentrenko: Again, here is a guy who is currently training and would be in shape. The problem here is outside of Europe, Dimentrenko is an unknown commodity and it’s very unlikely HBO would approve the fight. 

5. Alexander Povetkin: Wouldn’t it be nice to see this match up? It almost came off in the past but like the Haye fight it fell out due to injury. The problem here is Povetkin was recently seen crowning beauties for some girly magazine and there is no way he could not foot the bill in 2 weeks. 

6. James Toney: I know I know. Just say a little bird told me he is actually in the mix…don’t say i didn’t warn you. 

So as I see it, that’s it.  

6 possibilities, some viable and some not so, but with just 2 weeks to work something out anything can happen. Hopefully all parties will get the job done and find a decent replacement for the first heavyweight bout in a long time that had fans very excited and actually looking forward to.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Boxing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.