24.04.06 – By Marcus Wood: If you were to think of each weight division in boxing as a person in a bar it could give an interesting insight. Welterweight and Light Welterweight are the life of the place, cracking jokes, knocking back drinks and always getting attention. Middleweight would be the cool, classy guy always looking relaxed as he moved from woman to woman collecting numbers. Light heavyweight is the guy in the background, listening to stories, having a casual drink and just generally taking it easy despite the other night when he was really interesting.. And then we have the Heavyweight division. This is the shy guy in the corner whose main topic of conversation is his rock collection or in depth knowledge of Star Trek. As the night wears on fewer people make the effort to talk to him and he realises it but things just don’t seem to go his way. He talks about a lot of different things but doesn’t get any more interesting.
Okay so maybe that wasn’t the best way of getting the point across but it was that the Heavyweight division in particular is lacking a personality. Although unfair to compare today to the fighters of the past here it seems necessary. Muhammad Ali was the greatest talker in the business and he also created his own hype. Mike Tyson, say what you will about him, attracted attention and was a personality. Both men were full of entertaining trash talk that got the public talking about their fights with anyone. Today’s champions are Hasim Rahman, Nikolai Valuev and Wladimir Klitschko none of whom are capable of generating interest for various reasons. But it’s not totally their fault, Don King the main man of boxing seems to have grown lazy in his work with the Heavyweight division. He now takes an approach of setting fights up and hoping they promote themselves which was fine with an Ali or Tyson, they promoted themselves, but only Rahman makes an effort and that was with Toney, the only real great talker in Boxing.
But what should be done you ask? Take the case of Nikolai Valuev the 7’0 tall, 330 lb WBA Heavyweight Champion. Quickly after taking the belt from John Ruiz he was dubbed the Beast From The East by the Media. He had the image of an unstoppable monster that really could’ve worked. But a few days after this he professed he wasn’t a Beast and was on a news program informing about his charity work and giving a guided tour around the leisure centre he funded back in Russia. Now this is fine I’m not saying don’t do charity work, quite the opposite. But The Beast From The East really could’ve worked. The Media have repeatedly tried to create the real life Ivan Drago, the Russian villain from Rocky IV out of the influx of large Eastern fighters that have recently come to light from the Klitschko brothers to Valuev. But what if Valuev gave the public a Drago? What if he was The Beast From The East regardless of what he is like in real life? If there are few real personalities in the Heavyweight division then create some. It wouldn’t take too much to make the Western public buy into the illusion. Have Valuev’s promoter do most of the talking and have Valuev just look intimidating which at his size isn’t difficult. He’s also 43-0 with 31 KO’s which will help the case a lot.
The attraction of this kind of thing is highlighted by the fact that when there is a fight at a press conference or Tyson used to say something viciously insane, like it or not, it generated interest. For the recent Toney-Rahman fight they described a near fight that happened at a hotel that few saw. Not really the same thing.
I’m not proposing that every Heavyweight adopt a false character such as the one I’ve described for Valuev but a select few could expand upon certain characteristics. Have Hasim Rahman be slightly cockier than he already is.
Whether people turn up to root for or against a guy is irrelevant at this point as long as they turn up.
This isn’t the only problem the Heavyweight division has, far from it, but it is a problem and one that can be improved upon far easier than some of the others.