Believe it or not, American boxing was made for heavyweights (many people used to insist), but that was before Germany started landing a lot of heavyweight title bouts.
To this point, there may have been a million million-dollar gates. The first was in New Jersey in 1921 when champion Jack Dempsey flattened French champion Georges Carpentier in four rounds. Dempsey’s fights drew five million-dollar gates during the 1920s.
Following Dempsey’s example were Gene Tunney, Joe Louis, Ezzard Charles, Jersey Joe Walcott, Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. They had little trouble handling their foreign visitors. They couldn’t have dreamed what would happen next.
It wasn’t long until mediocre American heavyweights realized that when they went to Germany to box, as often as not they found themselves as parties of the second part.
Larry Holmes, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, Mike Tyson, Chris Byrd and Roy Jones Jr, might be the most prominent names still lingering in memories of nostalgic American fight fans.
World heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko of the Ukraine is sanctioned by the WBA and IBF and two or three other lesser agencies. His older brother, Vitali Klitschko, is sanctioned only by the WBC. We doubt you could find two boxers so thoroughly educated. Reportedly, both can handle up to five or six languages.
Wladimir Klitschko has the most endorsements, so he is generally considered a 100 percent heavyweight champ. Why not call it 80 percent for Wladimir, 20 percent for Vitali’s WBC’s token?
The past two or three years, each Klitschko stayed busy defeating two or three challengers with little difficulty. The heavyweight scrap the world wants to see, Klitschko vs. Klitschko, is not likely to happen. The Klitschko brothers don’t mind sparring with each other, but both swear they’ll never fight each other in a real professional brawl. Heck, if they were willing to sign a contract, their take-home pay might startle Floyd Mayweather Jr.
A week or so ago in Brooklyn, Bernard Hopkins won a 12-round fight worth an IBF light heavyweight title.
He’s only 48, you know.
Perhaps you remember when Hopkins was world middleweight champion. His mother died, and he spoke of retiring, but he said he wanted one more fight. So he booked a fight and won it. Not much later, he won another fight, then another, then another. Eventually, he said he found he could still box, so he put all retirement thoughts aside.
Hopkins had won 20 or more title defenses and was packing four championship belts when Little Rock’s Jermain Taylor squeezed out a tough decision over him at Las Vegas, and edged him out again in a rematch.
He boxed at super middleweight (168 pounds) a time or two, then went to light heavyweight (175). People were pretty much convinced he had nothing left until he astonishingly won the IBF title. That started some talk that he might go after the other two light heavyweight belts.
Just one caution. He won’t retire.
Sports, Pages 18 on 03/19/2013