Greatness Has No Face
Two weeks ago, heavyweight champ Vitali Klitschko defeated Mexican-American challenger Chris Arreola for the WBC title. The younger of the two Klitschko brothers, Vitali has successfully defended his title eight times in a 13-year career that has included a 4-year retirement. None of his last 10 victories have gone the full 12 rounds and he sent Arreola out of the ring crying.
Yet, none of this has been written up in the media as achievements for Klitschko, so much as it has been chalked up to the anemia of boxing’s heavyweight division. Klitschko is good, in other words, but he’s nowhere near as dominant as his record would indicate.
This happens often in sports. Players continue to play, fans continue to watch, but there is a fire missing. From tennis’ Williams sisters to the Allen Iverson-era, post-Michael Jordan NBA to the “We Are Family” Pittsburgh Pirates dynasty throughout the 70s; sports from time-to-time offer up champion stinkers.
Despite his surprising footwork for someone his size, his ruthless power and unheard of intelligence inside the ring, Dr. Ironfist is considered to be one such stinker; the one-eyed man in the land of the blind.
Is it the boxing promoters who are to blame? Is it American xenophobia? A shift in morals? The UFC-led movement toward mixed martial arts? It’s a little of all of that, but a majority of none. It’s just as likely to be the fault of the very fighters boxing fans have longed for since Roy Jones Jr., Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield.
This isn’t boxing’s first ebb. Eight men held the WBA heavyweight title after Muhammad Ali relinquished the title ’79. The ninth man was Mike Tyson eight years later in 1987. Can you name any of the eight men in between? Not without Google you can’t.
So why might boxing go through ebbs?
Let’s say the average age for a boxer to be at the top of his game is 32. When the sport was at it’s deepest ebb (around the Mike Weaver reign of 1982), 32-year-old boxers in 1982 were 10-year-olds watching Floyd Patterson and 20-year-olds watching Muhammad Ali. Sprinkle in a little Sonny Liston and Joe Frazier and one wonders if this doesn’t give a workable theory as to why by 1982, scads of boxers weren’t clamoring to fight.
They were scared off. Boxing, more than any other individual sport, takes constant and unyielding self-motivation. A young athlete picturing a fighter like Weaver or today’s less-respected champion heavyweights like Nikolai Valuev has less of a psychological mountain to scale in the early process. Once you become a contender or a champion, the battle becomes an entirely different animal, but when you’re 18 or 21 or 25, thinking about Patterson ain’t the same as thinking about Klitschko.
Today’s lack of supreme heavyweight competition follows this theory. Today’s 32-year-olds were watching Mike Tyson absolutely owning suckers in every heavyweight title category when they were 10. A decade later, they were watching Holyfield and Lewis.
Ali. Patterson. Tyson. Holyfield. These are big names in boxing. Among the biggest names in the sport’s history. It’s possible that boxing fans need only to blame the greatness of the sport’s past champions for the sickly competition available today. Sure, there will always be a few fearless competitors no matter what point in time they come from. Patterson was champ when Tyson was 10 and by the time Tyson turned 20, he was champ. But in the general movement by fans and future participants of the sport, watching greatness might de-motivate potential fighters from wanting to enter the ring with men of such caliber.
So if Klitschko really is a paper champion, and the last glory days of boxing was around 2004, boxing is due for another Renaissance six years from now.
Mark your calendars.
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