Sleeping Giants

Those who have known me personally for a long while will know that boxing was once the sport which I followed with greatest passion; tennis, the overwhelming subject matter of this blog, replaced it only within the last two to three years. The driving force behind this shift was what I will call the constipation of modern professional fight game- the elites very seldom fight, and virtually never actually face one another at their best anymore. Case in point, see the way the world's top two fighters pound-for-pound, Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather, have been dancing in circles, pricing or politicking themselves out of an actual in-ring encounter.

The heavyweight division has been worst of all in this regard. It has been several years now that the Klitschko brothers have stood head-and-shoulders above the rest of the division. For understandable reasons, they refuse to fight one another, and the few potentially-interesting challengers (the likes of David Haye and Alexander Povetkin) have been acutely tentative to step in the ring with them, invariably withdrawing from proposed meetings through contractual dispute or timely injury, thus leaving only second-raters like Samuel Peter and an aging Shannon Briggs for our top guns to pick off. In the face of all this, I have grown distant and apathetic toward the modern boxing scene.

However, we are faced today with an exception to this drearying rule, as Haye, the former cruiserweight phenom who has been making waves at heavyweight of late, is set to step in the ring with Wladimir Klitschko within the hour. This is the most exciting heavyweight showdown perhaps since Lennox Lewis and older brother Vitali Klitschko squared off in 2003. Personally-obnoxious as he is, a part of me would dearly like to see Haye pull the upset and shake up the status quo.