By Ron Borges

The Europeans aren't coming. The Europeans have arrived.  All four of them.

Oleg Maskaev put the punctuation point to that fact on the chin of World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Hasim Rahman in the final round of what may very likely have been Rahman's final reign as heavyweight champion Saturday night at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas. In what was a hard fought and closely contested match, Maskaev mustered the firepower to drop Rahman with the last of what had been an unexpectedly high number of left hooks land by the challenger to the head of the tiring

champion throughout the evening. Obsessed with watching the right hand that had knocked him unconscious in 1999, Rahman forgot Maskaev had other tools until he got hit with one of them one time too many and stumbled backwards before slumping to the floor after a Maskaev right followed a crushing left hook.

When Rahman got up he'd left his faculties on the floor, his only response to Maskaev's continued assault being to clutch him to his breast like a child grabbing at his father when the water around him suddenly grew alarmingly deep. But Rahman could not remain afloat for long, even by using Maskaev as a docking station. Soon he was sliding down Maskaev's think legs as the challenger pushed him away to try and find room enough to get off one more damaging shot.

This didn't happen until referee Jay Nady, who had been having about as bad a night as Rahman up to that point, pulled Maskaev off and ruled Rahman had slipped to the floor. Technically he had but the fact it was a slip induced by semi-consciousness seemed to elude Nady, although it didn't matter for long because Rahman no longer possessed enough of his faculties to elude Maskaev once Nady waved the two of them back together.

The 37-year old journeyman challenger waded back in and slammed a half dozen unanswered right hands into Rahman's face, leaving him buckled like a section of California freeway after an earthquake before the soon to be dethroned champion sat down on the lowest strand of the ropes for a respite. As he did Nady waved Maskaev off at 2:17 of the final round, a decision that was well warranted by then and one that made Maskaev the fourth heavyweight from the former Soviet Union to grab a portion of the most coveted prize in boxing in recent months, an invasion of the division

unprecedented in its long history.

"I need time to realize that I became a champion  tonight,'' a seemingly stunned Maskaev (33-5, 26 KO) said at a post-fight press conference that Rahman failed to attend because he was taken to a Las Vegas hospital to be observed for a possible concussion. "I hope I showed that you can't give up. You have to believe and keep on fighting."

"I knew I was going to win. I believed up to the last minute I would win the fight. I knew with three rounds left i had to win them all to win the fight. You should know this - European fighters are good and they are tough.''

The Kazakhastan-born Maskaev joined Wladimir Klitschko (IBF), Nicolay Valuev (WBA) and Sergei Liakhovich (WBO) as heavyweight title holders, forming an unexpected Eastern bloc in a division so long ruled by American heavyweights. That hyda-headed quartet sets up the possibility of some intriguing unification fights with international implications although perhaps ones of minimal interest in the United States, where most potential heavyweight boxers today are playing linebacker or power forward rather

than plying their trade between four strands of canvas-covered rope.

Today the grinding poverty and lack of options that are the spawning ground of great champions lies in other lands, Eastern Europe being the most notable. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the division of many of its provinces into separate countries wracked with internal strife, corruption and wide-spread poverty, the breeding ground for heavyweight fighters has shifted away from places like Detroit, where Joe Louis was reared, and Brooklyn, which spawned Mike Tyson and Riddick Bowe among many others, to far-flung places like Kazakhstan, Belarus and the Ukraine.

That's why promoter Bob Arum tried to sell the Rahman-Maskaev promotion as "America's Last Line of Defense.'' Even though Maskaev had himself become an American citizen several years ago, Arum was trying to market Rahman as the last American standing in defense of a title long dominated by American fighters. If he was, he wasn't standing for long.

Wobbled in the seventh round and fading as has been his pattern in the past from the ninth round on, Rahman often times looked like he could have won the fight simply on the strength of his left jab had he not stopped using it when his arms tired. Although it took Maskaev nearly twice as long to detach Rahman from his senses as it had in 1999, when he knocked him clear out of the ring with one right hand, he used much the same

formula. Maskaev weathered some difficult moments early in the fight and many more frustrating ones later as Rahman peppered him with a stiff jab and landed some big right hands behind it. But as each round passed, Maskaev began to score more often to the body and with those looping lefts Rahman most often seemed to stop with his head and the accumulation of punches wore him down until he was worn out.

Although a powerful puncher, Rahman lacks any amateur background and has been learning on the job ever since turning professional and often paying a price for that apprenticeship. That had nothing to do with what happened against Maskaev but it points to on explanation for how maddeningly inconsistent he can be. Rahman, like all the present title holders, was a flawed fighter who became a two-time heavyweight champion more from happenstance and the weakness of his rivals than from anything

spectacular in his own arsenal beyond the powerful right hand he was seldom able to land on Maskaev but in this era happenstance and good fortune seem to be enough to make anyone a possible champion.

The new champion is equally flawed. All of his five losses have ended in stoppages and the 10-fight winning streak he embarked upon several years ago that led him to Rahman was more the result of adroit matchmaking by promoter Dennis Rappaport and manager Fred Kesch than any dominating moments from Maskaev himself. His career was resurrected from the scrapheap by those two and his new trainer, Victor Valle, Jr., who agreed to take him on after coming upon this forlorn figure working out in a New York gym with no one to help him.

That was the nadir of Maskaev's career, coming after he'd been stopped by the wrong Corey Sanders (the one who was never WBO heavyweight champion, never conqueror of Klitschko and never considered much of a puncher until he cracked the fading Maskaev). But the heavyweight landscape being what it is, Maskaev found a way to come back not only into the title picture but now into a situation where he might make millions if he agrees to a November unification fight with Klitschko, whose brother he knocked

cold when both were amateurs fighting for the Red Army boxing team.

The WBC began taking steps to prevent that by issuing a post-fight statement from president Jose Sulaiman that the new champion must first fight the winner of the James Toney-Samuel Peter boxoff set for next month before he ventures off into an effort to unify the fractured title. Exactly why he should have to fight two guys who have both themselves failed in recent attempts to win the title (Peter by losing a decision to Klitschko despite dropping him three times; Toney because all he could manage was a

lackluster draw with Rahman in his last outing) is difficult to defend but this is boxing, where no one either has a defense or cares to mount one very often.

After it was over Rahman, typically, tried to cry the blues as he had after losing to John Ruiz and Evander Holyfield, saying Maskaev hit him the telltale punch on the break. That might have been a good argument had it not been Rahman who threw the first punch after Nady called "Break!''

He then launched into the usual loser's litany of how he wasn't hurt despite what Nady may have thought even though only moments earlier he'd been staggering around the ring like a sailor on the deck of a sinking ship.

"I was aware of everything,'' Rahman (41-6-2, 33 KO) said once he became aware of how to defend himself verbally at least. "The ref said break and I stopped and he let him keep throwing punches and I got caught with a shot. I thought I was supposed to stop when the ref said break and I put my hands down. I never thought he'd be taking the world title out of Las Vegas tonight.''

Maybe that's why Rahman forgot boxing's most basic principle - defend yourself at all times. As it was, Nady seemed to be doing a good job of abetting Rahman much of the night by constantly carping at Maskaev about holding that few others noticed. The refereeing got so one-sided at one point that HBO commentator and former heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis remarked about the apparent favoritism toward the American.

In the end though that made no difference because Maskaev was leading on two of the three judges' cards going into Round 12 and then made their opinion meaningless by virtue of one sweeping left hook and a string of unanswered and unanswerable right hands. Those punches made Oleg Maskaev not the most unlikely of champions but certainly what Rappaport claimed he was all along - the new Cinderella Man.

The original was James J. Braddock, who battled back from the Depression and the apparent loss of his career to win the title from Max Baer and then parlayed a losing title defense with Louis into a piece of Louis' purses for years to come. Oleg Maskaev won't be that lucky but he could very likely take the title he won Saturday night and turn it into many Euros - as well as a high pile of American dollars - by putting it on

the line in a late fall unification fight with Klitschko.

In the end, Maskaev may be precluded from doing that if the WBC can find a way to do it but with all four of the most recognized heavyweight championships now held by products of Eastern Europe it may not matter what the WBC wants. It's up to the Europeans to decide now what comes next.