Standing in the ring following his one-sided destruction of Jean Marc-Mormeck last March, Wladimir Klitschko rattled off the names of a few future opponents. There was Chris Arreola, the popular American with the crowd pleasing style. There was Seth Mitchell, the former Michigan State linebacker with the big punch and the bigger name. And there was David Price, the former British Olympian who has quickly become one of the fastest rising heavyweights in the sport.
British boxers David Haye and Dereck Chisora brawled during a post-fight news conference in Germany.
It was an ugly scuffle that cast a cloud over the sport of boxing as Dereck Chisora threatened to shoot fellow Brit David Haye, after they'd brawled at a press conference.
DUSSELDORF, Germany -- They sat on dark cushioned chairs in the ring, trainer and fighter, mentor and protégé. They come from two different worlds, two cultures, Emanuel Steward and Wladimir Klitschko. One was raised in the darkest corners of Detroit, churning out great welterweights from the legendary Kronk gym before becoming boxing's most sought after hired gun. The other, a Kazakh-born, Soviet raised heavyweight who oozed potential as a youth and was taught that everything American was evil. Yet here they were, in another city, making another title defense, Hall of Fame trainer and future Hall of Fame fighter, perhaps the most unstoppable tandem of this generation.
1. Cruiserweight will become cool. Not heavyweight cool. Maybe not even welterweight cool, either. But there are some interesting talents in the 200-pound weight class. In Europe there is Marco Huck, Yoan Pablo Hernandez and Krzysztof Wlodarczyk. There is talent in Russia (Denis Lebedev), Australia (Danny Green) and Nigeria (Lateef Kayode). And in the U.S. there is Steve Cunningham and a resurgent Antonio Tarver, giving the division a true global flavor. It's the kind of talented-but-anonymous weight class that would make for an interesting tournament. You hear that HBO and Showtime?
1. Floyd Mayweather enthralls and frustrates with equal measure. Mayweather remains as dazzling as he's ever been in the ring -- and as exasperating as he's ever been out of it. Such is the maddening duality of the welterweight champion who has never been in serious trouble in any fight, much less been defeated. He outclassed Victor Ortiz in a September title bout -- the best 147-pounder in the world not named Manny Pacquiao -- badly mistreating him with right-hand leads for three rounds before Ortiz saw red and committed a heinous foul. That's when Mayweather took rugged individualism to a new level and flattened his opponent with a one-two combination that Ortiz never saw coming. A cheap shot, but a legal punch. Fans cried foul, but the dearth of protest from within boxing was telling. The Mayweather enigma took a dark turn in December, when he was sentenced to 90 days in jail following his guilty plea on a 2010 domestic violence charge. Who knows what the next 12 months will
Former world heavyweight champion David Haye told CNN Thursday that he was quitting boxing and was not angling for a lucrative title fight with Ukraine's Vitali Klitschko.
When it comes to boxing, Americans are sizeists.
The Klitschko brothers tell CNN's Don Riddell they are proud of holding all of the heavyweight belts in boxing.
It took around eight seconds for Dominick Cruz and Urijah Faber to ensure that no one was going to confuse them for Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye. For one thing, the two UFC 132 main event fighters, combined, weigh in at not much more than Klitschko alone. And more important, unlike the heavyweight boxers, the bantamweight mixed martial artists came to fight on Saturday.
Five things we learned from Wladimir Klitschko's unanimous-decision victory over David Haye on Saturday at Hamburg's Imtech Arena.
I am mourning. And honestly, I did not see this coming. Roger Federer doesn't make it to the finals for the second year in a row. The Williams sisters crash out on the same day, in the fourth round! Three players with 15 Wimbledon titles between them. Three players that brought me to tennis in the first place. Is this really the end of an era? Tell me there is reason to hope. Can I please have [you] reassure common folks like me that Roger will face Rafael Nadal in another major final, and that Serena Williams will fight off another championship point! -- Charith, Bangalore
NEW YORK -- The Paper Champion made his way toward the stage, arms raised, a toothy smile creasing his face. These are the moments Floyd Mayweather lives for and craves, those meticulously planned, carefully choreographed entrances where all eyes lock on him. They feed his ego and reassure the most insecure star in sports that, indeed, he is still No. 1.
We have gone eight long, Eddie Chambers- and Hasim Rahman-filled years since the last meaningful heavyweight fight. That was 2003, when Lennox Lewis and Vitali Klitschko squared off in a rock-'em, sock-'em brawl in Los Angeles that abruptly ended when the ringside doctor declared the Ukrainian challenger couldn't continue because of a cut above his left eye so deep you could almost see bone.
The actress and the quarterback were spotted together over Memorial Day
I've been hearing more and more recently about a possible blockbuster fight:
The Scream 4 actress and the Ukrainian boxer split after two years together
IBF, IBO and WBO champion Wladimir Klitschko tells CNN that losing to David Haye is not an option.
The voice on the other end of the line Wednesday afternoon was booming, the excitement growing with every word.
With his status as one of boxing's top prospects in jeopardy, Victor Ortiz followed a path taken by too many fallen sports stars.
The big show. Those were the words former unified heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis chose to describe a boxer's seminal moment, a fight that defines his career. Lewis says his came in 2002, against Mike Tyson, when Lewis won a one-sided fight that ended with the once feared Tyson lying battered and bruised on the canvas.
It seems simple, really. Fighter A is the best in his weight class. Fighter B is right behind him. To settle the debate over who is No. 1, Fighter A and B square off. Good fights lead to rematches and, in some cases, trilogies.
1. Boxing will finally get Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao. It has been derailed by everything from drug testing to legal issues, but in 2011 the world will get the one fight everyone wants to see. While Pacquiao is training for his May 7 date with Shane Mosley, Mayweather will settle (or at least put off) his legal problems, making both available for a November fight. The hype for the showdown between boxing's top two will be unprecedented and more than 100,000 fans will buy tickets at Cowboys Stadium. Mayweather-Pacquiao will shatter the pay-per-view record, exceeding 2.5 million buys and finishing as the most-watched boxing event in history.
When you are the heavyweight champion of the world, when you have a hard time getting opponents to give you good rounds much less good fights, sometimes you need a little extra motivation. Motivation like, say, an opponent who has been convicted of battering his girlfriend, who calls your trainer an Uncle Tom and who talks more trash than a WWE wrestler.
WBA World Heavyweight Champion David Haye tells CNN's Kate Giles he is eager to fight the Klitschko brothers.
There are 101 reasons not to like the heavyweight division right now. It's boring. It lacks depth. All the good fighters are in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Two years ago, Samuel Peter's boxing career flatlined on a stool in Berlin. His reign as WBC heavyweight champion was over, with Vitali Klitschko having battered the bulky Nigerian for eight rounds until Peter could no longer summon the strength to continue.
The term "low motor" is scout-speak for lazy.
In many ways, Wladimir Klitschko's career mirrors that of other great heavyweight champions. At 6-foot-6, 244 pounds he possesses uncanny power (a 84.2 percent knockout percentage) and skill and for the last five years has dominated opponents like few other fighters of his era.
IBF and WBO world heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko says to WBA title holder David Haye it is time to fight.
SI.com's Bryan Armen Graham brings you blow-by-blow, round-by-round coverage of the IBF/WBO heavyweight championship fight between Wladimir Klitschko (53-3, 47 KOs) and Eddie Chambers (35-1, 18 KOs).
When Vitali Klitschko announced his return to boxing in 2008, he told everyone he was coming back for one reason: He wanted to make history. He wanted to join his younger brother, IBF and WBO titleholder Wladimir Klitschko, as a world champion, thereby becoming the first pair of brothers to hold heavyweight titles simultaneously. Vitali accomplished that feat in his first fight back, knocking out Samuel Peter in a one-sided bout that earned him the WBC belt, the same title he relinquished when he retired.
For the first time in nearly five years, a legitimate heavyweight champion roosts atop the boxing food chain.
What a muddled mess the heavyweight division has become. Four recognized titles. Five, if you count Ring Magazine. Champions. Champions in Recess. Champions Emeritus. Sanctioning bodies manipulating their rankings (have you seen WBA No. 1 contender John Ruiz recently?) just to squeeze out a few extra dollars. And the only cost is the integrity of the sport.
What we saw Saturday in the heavyweight title fight between Wladimir Klitschko and Hasim Rahman was a clinical dismantling.
In the five years I have spent covering boxing, I have had a few of what I like to call "cringe moments." I cringed when greedy promoters paraded a battered and broken Mike Tyson into the ring for fight after fight, even though he was little more than a shell of his former self. And he had a history of biting people.
In a sport where sanctioning bodies routinely manipulate the rankings to serve their interests, where networks permit promotional companies to dictate scheduling and where promoters allow a general distaste for one another to get in the way of making the best fights, is it possible that judging is the most corrupted part of boxing?
Nikolai Valuev's disputed decision win over John Ruiz on Saturday (his second disputed decision win over Ruiz, for those who are counting) reportedly drew boos from the crowd in Berlin's Max Schmeling Stadium. It drew basically no response at all from American sports fans, of course, since the bout wasn't actually televised in the U.S. Even had it been, though, it's hard to imagine that the rematch between the 35-year-old Valuev, whose 7-foot height is barely enough to compensate for his rudimentary skills, and the 36-year-old Ruiz, who though adept, always seems to do just enough to underwhelm the judges, would have generated much interest on the first weekend of the college football season. Or on any other weekend, for that matter.
At 4 p.m. Wednesday, a contingent from Top Rank, led by CEO Bob Arum, will arrive at the Los Angeles offices of Golden Boy Promotions to begin -- and hopefully finalize -- negotiations with Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer for a December welterweight bout between Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Paquiao.
One of the questions I'm often asked is this: When today's kids, who love the so-called Extreme Sports -- that's the X Games, like skateboarding -- grow up, won't that mean that traditional sports will tumble in popularity?
The call came last week, just as I was boarding a plane to Salt Lake City. On the other end of the line was Bernd Boente, the top-flight manager for IBF, WBO and IBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko and his brother, former WBC champion Vitali Klitschko.
Saturday night's fight between Wladimir Klitschko and Sultan Ibragimov is being ballyhooed as a heavyweight championship unification bout. That doesn't mean all that much in these days of balkanized belts, faceless titleholders and the general eclipse of boxing. Ah, but once there were giants. For a sense of just what the heavyweight title meant in an earlier time -- both in the world of sport and beyond -- tune in a couple of hours before Klitschko and Ibragimov get ready to rumble (or stumble, or whatever it is today's big men do) for HBO's lovingly produced and provocative Joe Louis: America's Hero ... Betrayed, a documentary on perhaps the greatest and most important heavyweight champion of all time.
A unification fight between IBF heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko and WBO champion Sultan Ibragimov is close to being finalized, Klitschko's manager Bernd Boente told SI.com on Friday.
One of the loudest criticisms of boxing -- usually levied by advocates of mixed martial arts -- is that the sport is dominated by aging stars. For the most part, the critics are correct. Oscar de la Hoya (34), Floyd Mayweather (30), Wladimir Klitschko (31) and Shane Mosley (36) are all on the wrong side of 30. They are also still the biggest draws, with De La Hoya-Mayweather breaking every box office record and Klitschko leveling every young fighter left dangling in his path.
With enough glitz, kitch and corporate sponsorships to make Las Vegas blush, welcome to the new
and weird (yet weirdly underwhelming) epicenter of world boxing
NEW YORK -- IBF and IBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko refuted a report Sunday that he suffered a broken hand during his win over Lamon Brewster.
A stateside Baguette as we wait out the rain in Paris...
SI.com: Get real, Evanderupdated: Sun Mar 18 2007 18:34:00
There are only so many stiffs Evander Holyfield can beat up on before someone gives him a title shot.
SI.com: Heavy deadweightupdated: Fri Jan 26 2007 12:29:00
In 1992, Riddick Bowe decided to take a stand. Unhappy with the WBC's mandate that he fight No. 1 contender Lennox Lewis, Bowe decided that the belt was no longer worth the leather strap it came on. So in a glorious public-relations stunt, Bowe took the belt and unceremoniously dumped it into a London trash can.
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