By Patrick Kehoe

Never before in the long history of professional boxing have two brothers stood arm and arm at the summit of heavyweight boxing, title holders both, separate but equal coefficient agents knee deep in the muddled fistic trade. With Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko forming a partnership of mutually exclusive ownership of parts of the fractured heavyweight boxing championship, fans are left with a situation which cannot be resolved since the brothers have long refused to fight one another.

There has been considerable buzz around the Net since the October 2008 return of Vitali Klitschko to his winning ways as a heavyweight title holder. Almost four years out of the championship ring and Vitali Klitschko faces down the newest WBC title holder, Samuel Peter, putting on an exhibition of boxing that seemed almost flawless.

At age 37, the Ukrainian giant boxed and bombed like a prime fighting force, in dispatching the overreaching yet underachieving Peter, to the delight of Showtime subscribers and European boxing fans alike. Almost taunting Peter to load up and wing his “Nigerian Express” of a right hand, Klitschko moved jabbing and countered off the back foot taking his power hitting opportunities when and exactly where he found them.

Beating Peter has been generally assessed as a supreme feat of athletic restitution, Vitali Klitschko’s boxing career having been almost voided by recurrent injury before and after his December 2004 drubbing Britain’s Danny Williams. For long periods Klitschko fans had been left to wait for sightings of “Dr. Ironfist” in his younger brother Wladimir’s corner or listening for mayoral election results from Kiev.

But if Vitali’s reactivation was a return of a king, in the minds of many, what did that make brother Wladimir’s Emanuel Steward honed heavyweight title drives, which had pushed past knockout defeats to Lamon Brewster and Corrie Sanders, establishing his own CEO position above the talent liquidated heavyweight division, post-Lennox Lewis?  Still, they hold aloft the hand of the other whenever they win in the boxing ring, no signs of sibling rivalry or professional jealously, let alone a need to settle who in the Klitschko clan is the better man. We collectively nod in deference when they talk about how difficult it would be for their mother and family should they ever boxed.

Few in boxing are calling for the Klitschko’s to fight one another; that in itself a rare enough understanding of personal choice. However, the Klitschko Dilemma of brothers at the top of the elite level of heavyweight boxing means there can again be no resolution, with respect to a final determination of the heavyweight division. And what’s good for the Klitschko’s sadly is not good for boxing, its reputation and its marketability already complicated by the proliferation of world championship titles.

At this juncture, we need not expound upon the MMA tidal wave.

The very fact that two men can effectively reach #1 and #1a in the heavyweight division gives hope to those who have long despaired of the mantle of the heavyweight division ever being codified under the unifying figure of a successor to Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. To all intents and purposes, one fight could act as a temporary redress to our continued historical oversight with respect to having a world heavyweight champion.

Then again, in a virtualized age, who believes in permanence anymore?

Perhaps, that romantic figuration – founded via the giganticism of John L. Sullivan’s imperious personality cult of the 1880s – must remain contingent in this post-modern world of second to second scandal exposures, exploitative media and honorless sports litigation of contractual agreement. Perhaps, boxing can only have men of the eclipsing moment, pseudo-greats made to look marvelous just for now, on any given day, for the latest promotional blockbuster. ‘Later’ like ‘before’ doesn’t matter in the data flow of things of high definition currency, happening, fictions made to look totally real.

Thus, the symbolic summit of the sport – heavyweight boxing – remains a vacancy, left without a figure head, a unique individual for historic verification, popular notice and marketing celebrity. Without the quest for dominance, as the underlying reputation of the best heavyweight, what is heavyweight boxing as a sports spectacle? Who indeed is the man, the best of the big guys who’s not actually expected to beat the best of the rest, necessarily?

Since the middle of the 1970s, the WBC and WBA – followed by the IBF then the WBO – have legitimated organizational champions (championship fights processed as sanctioning license fees (bounty) paid to governing bodies) to the exclusion of linear world champions. The licensing of title fights for commercial (international) television product marketing went a long way to fracturing the concept of dynastic championship progression. Where money is concerned you do not need the man who beat the man who beat the man. You need only a title belt to be wrapped around a fighter’s waist at the end of a ‘title fight’ for ringside photographers, television narration PR and the grandstanding bragging rights of a fighter’s posse.

When the boxing promotional entities accepted this reality as an operating principle, the nature of a championship as a marketing tool for gaining network television money became a championship’s primary function, divorcing it from the historic concept of symbolic superiority. Champions became fighters with belts who were no longer required to defeat the very best fighters within their division. Essentially, titleholders needed to defend titles against network sanctioned opponents and make a yearly mandatory (politics not merit determining that status) though talking about “beating the best” was required for on-air interviews. By the 1980s, boxing legends became a qualifying term for titleholders capable and willing to fight at multiple weights, more or less successfully.

Today, fighters are less compelled to plot career objectives as world/divisional domination, except as rhetorical posturing. Making the best fight possible, meaning for the most money, replaces the idea of absolute excellence exhibited to secure the most money. Only recently has the encroachment of mixed martial arts as a new age fighting spectacle and cultural phenomena has moved boxing and its promotional entrenchment past the easy formula established since the late 1970s.

Heavyweights have a weight/competition ceiling, just the one division; thus, the heavyweights who endure over time tend to get straddled with the more traditional burden of fighting off the ranking challengers. Even so, the last heavyweight champion fulfilling that role was Lennox Lewis. And it becomes massively important to understand that Lewis’ last successful defense was his blood bath technical stoppage of Vitali Klitschko. The man thought Lewis’ truest heir as best heavyweight, if not successor as ‘undisputed’ champion. The term ‘undisputed champion’ became a prurient label, the pet obsession of ring announcers, diffident ink editors and boxing attorneys as an attempt to redress in language what was no longer a functioning process in the ‘making’ of boxing title holders.

Few who follow boxing would deny that the Klitschko’s are superior in talent and reputation to WBA champion Nikolai Valuev; but, whether or not Valuev ever fights one of the Klitschko’s has little to do with his being the champion, since that determination cannot be made under the current system, one antithetical to determining ‘a’ heavyweight champion.

Even the Klitschko’s as a dynasty, one brother following along after the ruling legacy of the other, would have been great for the sport. And yet into this indeterminate chaos theory come the outspoken and largely outrageous David Haye. The former cruiserweight main man has gone very public at every turn to declare his challenge of the Klitschko brothers. Seems he means it though. Dare we take him at his word?

Seems for Mr. Haye any brother will do and after chasing Wladimir Klitschko half way around Europe and braving WBC President Jose Sulaiman’s comic advice counseling, the one win heavyweight wonder to be patient, well, Hay nabbed a fight with Vitali. Well, he almost did. Maybe Wladimir will fight Haye after all, summer 2009? You see, they are interchangeable, co-authoring an unprecedented chapter in heavyweight title reigning.

Two almost authentic crowns are better than one?

Or could “Hasty Haye” make the Klitschko dilemma moot? Well, Haye beating the odds and Wladimir will not solve the larger question of the heavyweight championship riddle, not immediately.

Besides, we all know title belts are made to be stripped or left in trash cans: thanks Riddick.

Now, if Vitali can just stop calling out the 44 year-old Lennox Lewis – now entering his seventh year of retirement from the ring – and get on with looking like a world beater. That would be sweet!

Patrick Kehoe maybe reached at pkehoe@telus.net