Billy’s Boxing Blog

Whether or not you think any of it amounts to a hill of beans there has been more talk about the Heavyweight division over the last couple of weeks since Mike Tyson went Donner Party upside Evander Holyfield’s dome.

First there was the last minute halt to Nicolai Valuev vs. Ruslan Chagaev in a unifying rematch.

There seems to be some miscommunication here so just to clear this up because some of you don’t know what you are talking about, Chagaev did not pull out due to illness. The day after the weigh in so called Medical Experts said Chagaev was not healthy and therefore could not fight.

Whatever!

Take a look at the weigh-in photos. Chagaev looks to be in pretty darn good shape and it’s Valuev who appears to look a tad anemic. I think he was on the De La Hoya Kangaroo meat diet.

So with that fight in the rubbish pile it was up to Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye to give us our heavyweight fix, but as we know Haye chickened out…ahem…I mean pulled out due to either a hand or back injury and would be on the shelf for either 8 or 3 weeks (choose whichever excuse makes you feel best). Haye tried some last minute nonsense to “try to save the fight” but Klitschko has had enough of the pompous Brit’s babble so he moved on.

Waiting in the wings was a ready Ruslan Chagaev but before he was chosen to take on Klitschko the roaches started piling out of the woodwork and they all deemed themselves as worthy challengers to the throne.

Kevin Johnson, Brian Minto, Odlanier Solis, John Ruiz and more did their best version of “La Cucuracha” but thankfully Team Klitschko had a large can of Raid on hand and disposed of the unwanted vermin.

After you cut through all that nonsense what you end up with is a pretty darn good fight. In fact this may very well be the best fight the Heavyweight division has to offer. Two Champions with all their belts on the line and the Ring Magazine Belt thrown in for good measure. It’s hard to argue that this is anything but a very meaningful fight. Unless of course you are employed by HBO, then you have no choice but to scoff.

But then again…what do I know? I am just a stupid Billy Goat.

Hats Off

Over the past year or two I have been very very hard on Ruslan Chagaev for his so called health issues, but now that I understand the facts I congratulate him for not letting the shenanigans pulled on him only days earlier deter him from his mission to fight the best.

On the other hand we have Wladimir Klitschko. I don’t think it’s any big secret I am pretty big on both Klitschko’s. Over the years I have got into some heated arguments with a good friend about Wlad’s merits. My friend insisted Klitschko was ducking the big names at every turn. That same friend told me that he has changed his tune on Klitschko and actually is very impressed that he is willing to take on the undefeated southpaw Chagaev on very short notice.

There…you see! It’s not always piss and vinegar spewing from my blog. Sometimes there is even a little love to spread around.

Sometimes. 

Oh Yeah I Almost Forgot

Somehow David Haye and his team got their feet out of their mouths long enough to say that now they wanted to fight the other Klitschko, Vitali.

David, David, David! 

You have pranced around with photos of you holding the brothers severed heads and even wore those distasteful shirts to press conferences. You have called them every name in the book and then when it was time for you to prove yourself you tucked your tail between your legs (or smashed your finger in the door) and ran.

Trust me, you ain’t getting a sniff of either brother for a long long time.

But I am hearing chatter that maybe a fight between you and Chris Arreola has already been discussed. Believe it or not I am down with this fight and hope it ends up in my neck of the woods.

It’s a fight that should have always been the springboard to the Klitschko’s. It’s always been a mystery to me why either one of these guys got to leap frog over the division and challenge the good Doctors when all they have ever beaten is bums and washed up has beens.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 3:54 am 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.