Ring, WBO, IBF, IBO Champion Wladimir Klitschko will face British and Commonwealth Champion Derek Chisora on April 30th. The fight had been scheduled to take place on December 4th but was cancelled when Klitschko suffered a last minute injury in training. Chisora is understandably happy, saying that “”This news is a fantastic late Christmas present…I always believed that I would fight Klitschko, and my faith has been repaid. I was a bit worried that he might try and fight an easier touch, but I think I’ve earned my opportunity. I was gutted when Wladimir pulled out of our fight just a couple of days beforehand. But now I’ve got another chance to take his titles away. He’s a great world champion, but his time at the top is well and truly up”.
However boxing fans worldwide will not share Chisora’s joy as his fight means that the long anticipated unification fight between Klitschko and WBA Champion David Haye is not going ahead. Infuriatingly it seems that neogtiations had gone exceptionally well with the two sides agreeing on terms including a 50-50 revenue split, the fight taking place in Germany, being broadcast on RTL in Germany and Wladimir Klitschko getting top billing.
The holdup was the date of the fight with Sky Sports and RTL unable to agree on a date before the 2nd July that the Klitschkos could also get a soccer stadium for the fight. The Klitschkos and K2 were keen to the fight on April 30th but that date did not work for Sky, apparently because the British broadcaster was unwilling to do a second pay per view in April after Amir Khan’s April 16th defense of his WBA Light-Welterweight Title. The Klitschkos tried to convince Sky to move the Khan date but this wasn’t possible.
This left fighters with a choice, either take a stay-busy fight before the 2nd July or remain inactive for a prolonged period of time. Haye preferred the second option but Klitschko was unwilling to sit out for ten months months and so decided to go ahead with the Chisora fight. They sought to get agreement from the Haye camp for the interim fight but this wasn’t forthcoming. The Klitschko camp is on record as being open to the Haye fight going ahead on the 2nd July, with Bernard Boente saying that “I think the fight will come, but too bad it’s not now because of the date and venue…We could still do it if they would agree to July 2. We still have the door open for that, but Wladimir is going to have a fight in April. Haye can also do a fight in between, maybe the mandatory with Ruslan Chagaev. We are not opposed to that”. Adam Booth on the other hand has come out aggressively and criticised Klitschko for not making the fight. There is yet no word on whether David Haye will fight in the first half of this year or whether he will wait for Klitschko.
While it is certainly disappointing to see what is probably the second biggest fight to be made in boxing after Mayweather-Pacquiao once again fall through there does seem to be encouraging signs that the two sides are moving closer together. One has to wonder why Sky would choose an Amir Khan PPV over Klitschko-Haye given Khan’s poor performance on Sky Box Office in the past and the likelihood that his opponent is to be the uninspiring Lamont Peterson. Part of me suspects that’s an excuse and that in reality Sky is more worried that the unification match wouldn’t fulfil its commercial potential in the UK on April 30th due to it being the same weekend as the the marriage of Prince William (second in line to the British throne) to Kate Middleton, an event that will dominate the attention of the British media and so deny the fight the blanket media coverage that made Haye-Valeuv and Haye-Harrison so successful. Additionally the Royal Wedding will be a double public holiday in the UK with most people getting the 29th April and 2nd May off work, something that will likely result in many Britons taking long weekends away which will again lessen the likelihood of casual fans buying the pay per view. While avoiding clashing with a wedding is a slightly undignified reason not to hold a boxing fight in this case its certainly not an unreasonable one.
Likewise one cannot really take against either Haye or Klitschko for their different responses to the proposed July 2n – one can understand Haye’s position that it doesn’t make sense to risk the biggest fight in the division by taking a stay-busy fight against lesser opposition but equally one can understand Klitschko not wanting to be out of action for so long. For once it looks like there is no one to blame and that the timings just didn’t work out for everyone. Fight fans will just have to hope that everything works over the next seven months so that comes the summer we finally get to find out whose the man in what was once boxing’s glamour division.
