LAS VEGAS, NV “ There can only be one king and on Saturday, November 12, at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, NV, world heavyweight champion Vitali “Dr. Iron Fist” Klitschko and interim heavyweight champion Hasim “The Rock” Rahman will go mano-a-mano in the biggest event of the year for the biggest prize in sports. Top Rank, in association with K2 Promotions, Caesars Palace and Wynn Las Vegas, presents “Seek and Destroy!” — The Heavyweight Championship of the World. Only one man will emerge from the ring that night wearing the linear crown dating back to the great John L. Sullivan himself.
“This is the most significant heavyweight championship bout in many years,” said Bob Arum, CEO of Top Rank. “There’s nothing like a highly-anticipated heavyweight title fight,” said Mark Taffet of HBO PPV. “Boxing fans have been waiting a long time for the Klitschko-Rahman showdown and on Nov. 12 they’re finally going to get it.”
Tickets for “Seek and Destroy” go on sale Wednesday and are $1,000, $750, $500, $300, $200, $100 and $50. The box office phone number is (702)-739-3267.
Klitschko, 35-2 with 34 knockouts, from Kiev, Ukraine, is the World Boxing Council (WBC) and the Ring Magazine champion. He is universally recognized as the World Heavyweight Champion. WBC interim champion Rahman, 41-5-1 with 33 knockouts, of Baltimore, MD., is looking to regain the title he won in 2001, when he knocked out Lennox Lewis in South Africa.
Arum also announced that World Boxing Organization (WBO) welterweight champion Antonio Margarito, 32-4, 33 KOs, of Tijuana, Mexico, will defend his world title against Manuel Gomez, 28-10-2, 20 KOs, of Laredo, Texas.
As an added attraction, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. “the enormously popular teenage son of the legendary Julio Cesar Chavez” will box on the Pay Per View telecast.
At the age of 34, Klitschko has been fighting as a professional for over 8 ½ years. He won the vacant WBC world heavyweight title in April, 2004, and made a successful defense in his last fight on Dec. 11.
In his title defense Klitschko tore into Danny Williams and dominated the fight. Klitschko scored one knockdown in the first round, cut Williams over his right eye and scored additional knockdowns in the third, seventh and eighth rounds.
The referee stopped the fight at 1:26 of the eighth round. Klitschko led by scores of 70-60, 70-60 and 70-59.
“I was surprised he was able to take so many punches,” said Klitschko.
Klitschko will now focus on Rahman who is the WBC interim heavyweight champion.
Rahman was scheduled to challenge Klitschko on April 30 for the title but the fight was postponed and rescheduled. The WBC authorized a title fight for the interim with the condition that Klitschko fight the winner.
Rahman won that fight, defeating Monte Barrett on August 13.
Rahman had an unusual introduction to boxing. When he was a teenager, he was challenged by a local boxer to what was called a “body punching contest.”
“I got the better of him and he said I should stop by the Mack Lewis Gym. I never forgot what he told me ‘You could make a million bucks.”
So, at the age of 20, Rahman began training in the local gym.
Klitschko is the older brother of 1996 Olympic gold medalist and former WBO world heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko. Vitali was born in Kyrgystan, Wladimir in Kazakhstan. When they were young boys they traveled extensively through the Soviet Union with their father, Wladimir Rodionovich, a colonel in the Soviet Air Force from Ukraine, and their mother, Nadezhda Ulyanovna, a clerk, from Russia. The family settled in the Ukraine in 1985.
Vitali started boxing at the age of 13, his brother Wladimir at 14. Both brothers have doctorates and speak Ukrainian, Russian, German and English.
The Klitschko vs. Rahman pay-per-view telecast, beginning at 9 pm ET/6 pm PT on November 12, has a suggested retail of $49.95. It will be broadcast live on HBO Pay-Per-View and will be available to over 50 million pay-per-view homes. The telecast will be available in HD-TV for those viewers who can receive HD. HBO Pay-Per-View is the leading supplier of event programming to the pay-per-view industry. For your daily Klitschko vs. Rahman fight week updates, log on to www.HBOPPV.com.