Klitschko-Ibragimov

With seventeen seconds left to go in a fight he had done virtually nothing to win, Sultan Ibragimov feinted. And Wladimir Klitschko, on his was to an effortless win and with nothing to fear, flinched. Could it have been more hopeless?

Before the fight, I tried to frame things in an optimistic light. Thus the following rationalizations: These guys weren’t great fighters, but we weren’t looking at them through the prism of pure boxing history, so their relative mediocrity wasn’t too important. They were doing something culturally significant—two fighters from the former Soviet Union moving toward a heavyweight title unification. And it might be an interesting fight.

I thought it curmudgeonly to judge these guys by the yardstick provided by the fighters I grew up watching or the great fighters of still earlier eras. “See them for who they are,” I told myself. “They don’t have to be Ali, Holmes, Liston, or even Page or Tubbs to be worthwhile.”

Who was I trying to kid? They’re horrible. The only enjoyment I got during the fight was in the brief period of time I was able to doze. I woke up exactly where I’d left off, except that it was a round and a half later.