America at Large: Excuse me for a moment while I try to balance this ball on my nose . . . Kevin Iole wasn't the first sportswriter to allot me a place in the animal kingdom.
Several years ago Don King's late matchmaker Al Braverman, having concluded we had been manifestly unfair in our treatment of "The World's Greatest Promoter", labelled me and my New York colleague Michael ("Wolf Man") Katz "The Rhinoceros Twins". A few days ago Iole, writing in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, accused me (and several colleagues) of having performed as "clapping seals" on King's behalf.
I didn't take either reference personally, and I might well never have learned of Iole's attack had it not been forwarded to me (and to several other clapping seals) by King's publicist Alan Hopper. My understanding is Kevin was displeased when he learned Hopper had distributed e-mail links to his column in the Nevada newspaper. My own feeling about that is if you're going to be upset somebody actually reads what you've written, it probably means you shouldn't have committed it to print it in the first place.
What got Iole's dander up was what he considered the smug satisfaction with which much of the sportswriting community greeted Vitali Klitschko's abdication last week. The Ukrainian giant had been scheduled to defend his World Boxing Council heavyweight title against Hasim Rahman last Saturday night, but three days before the bout was to have taken place, Dr Klitschko announced his retirement from the ring, having withdrawn a few days earlier on medical grounds. Since this was the fourth time Klitschko had postponed the WBC-mandated defence against Rahman, word of the knee injury was greeted with some cynicism, although in his defence, subsequent surgery would appear to confirm this time, at least, it was genuine enough.
My own response, I thought, was fair and measured. I merely noted Klitschko's retirement announcement called to mind Dorothy Parker's response upon being informed Calvin Coolidge had died: "How could they tell?". One would be more inclined to sympathise with Klitschko's position and write it all off to a series of bad breaks were one not reminded that even in between the four Rahman postponements he was healthy enough to want to fight less threatening opponents like Oleg Maskaev and Calvin Brock.
Moreover, as King was quick to point out, in his two reigns atop the heavyweight division - his earlier one as World Boxing Organisation champ and his more recent tenure as WBC belt-holder - the elder Klitschko never defended against a top-ranked mandatory challenger.
Add to that his performance in his two most high-profile fights, in which he sat on his stool while the man in the opposite corner (Chris Byrd in 2000; Lennox Lewis in 2003) was declared the winner, and his legacy is unlikely to place him anywhere in the pantheon of the bravest champions in heavyweight history. For the record, the final roster of Vitali's opponents in title fights reveals he beat Herbie Hide, Ed Mahone, Obed Sullivan, Corrie Sanders, and Danny Williams, while losing to Byrd and Lewis and successfully avoiding Rahman at every turn.
The conclusion of this sorry episode will doubtless prove somewhat embarrassing to HBO and its collaborators at The Ring magazine, both of whom anointed and then continued to designate the man known as "Chicken Kiev" the most formidable heavyweight in the world long after it had become apparent to most he had the body of an Adonis and the balls of a mouse.
Which is not to say his infirmities may not have been genuine, although they could well have been self-inflicted. Long after he assumed the statute of limitations had expired, Vitali confirmed he was held out of competition at the 1996 Atlanta Games (at which younger brother Wladimir won the gold medal at superheavyweight) because he had tested positive for steroids in a pre-Olympic screening. It would not be entirely unreasonable to suppose the fragile state of his body at 34 might be traced to the abuses to which it was subjected when he was in his 20s.
I don't pretend to know, but in his impassioned valedictory to Klitschko's career Iole wrote that Vitali "desperately wanted" to fight Rahman, which in light of the evidence seems manifestly absurd. The Klitschko resignation, to be sure, inspired considerable glee in Deerfield Beach, Florida - the headquarters of Don King Promotions. Within days, the WBC officially voted to promote Rahman from "interim" to fully-fledged champion, meaning that between Rahman, John Ruiz (WBA), Chris Byrd (IBF) and Lamon Brewster (WBO), King now has all four of the recognised belts in his heavyweight stable.
In the absence of the impediment posed by Klitschko, the stage is set for a winner-take-all tournament to produce the division's first truly undisputed champion since 1992, when Riddick Bowe tossed his WBC belt into a London dustbin. One doesn't have to be a Don King apologist - or even a clapping seal - to recognise this is a development good for boxing fans, and good for boxing itself.
