14.07.05 – By Bradford Scott: Recently, Samuel Peter has cemented the fact that he is the premier up in coming heavyweight, who has been making noise in the division by convincingly knocking out opponents, albeit 2nd and 3rd tier heavyweights, but he still looks like he doesn’t mess around. He comes to fight.
At the same time, Vitali Klitschko isn’t fighting and is still nursing his injured back.
Meanwhile, Calvin Brock has made some noise in the heavyweight division. He’s undefeated, and recently decisioned Jameel McCline on April 23, 2005. He’s looking sharp and ready for action soon.
And Chris Byrd isn’t fighting.
Rahman is hell bent on making all kinds of noise with the WBC regarding Vitali Klitschko, and in the mean time Vitali is letting Monte Barrett and Hasim Rahman fight for an interim version of his title. I have to say though, Hasim Rahman hasn’t been a force in any way, shape or form since he got double slapped by Lewis in their rematch. He’s only beat journeymen and had bad trouble with Al Cole.
…And Wladimir Klitschko isn’t fighting.
Instead, both Wladimir and Vitali are determined to be heavyweight champions at the same time. It is painfully obvious, in my opinion, that Vitali is avoiding fighting until his brother gets a shot at Byrd and they fulfill that dream.
…And still no unification fights.
It’s almost a crime to sit back and watch Chris Byrd run from Wladimir Klitschko. It’s insulting to watch Wladimir go to court and try to fight him, and at the same time, it’s a complete disgrace that Davarryl Williamson insists he was winning the first fight with Wladimir, when, in fact, he looked like a scared little girl and ran the entire 5 rounds of the fight.
The boxing world needs to wake up and realize what exactly is going on here. Vitali’s mindset seems to be that the longer he waits to fight, the better chance of his brother fighting Byrd and the brothers being dual champions.
Wladimir should be fighting once a month to prove that he is once again a contender in the division, not fighting top 50 guys once every 6 months and going to court to miracle himself a ranking he doesn’t deserve.
Vitali should do what he said he would do and be an active champion. We were told he would fight often, and be active. Boy were we wrong about our assumptions.
…And here comes James Toney.
Bradford Scott can be reached at hirebrad@hotmail.com