A good and fair article on the fight, for a change.
Graham Houston
The Fight Writer
Fightwriter: Easy Does It!
February 25, 2008
By Graham Houston
Even though he did not get the KO that trainer Emanuel Steward so clearly wanted, Wladimir Klitschko at least gave an utterly dominating performance against Sultan Ibragimov in their heavyweight unification title fight on Saturday Night on HBO.
Really, this ceased to be a competitive fight after the second round. Ibragimov tried, but nothing was working.
What the fight showed yet again was how difficult it is to beat Klitschko. With his height, reach, control of the ring and punching power he is able to keep his opponents contained and outclass them. Fighters who try to go right at him risk being punished with counter punches, while those who stay outside cannot cope with Klitschko's steady and effective left jab.
Ibragimov's tactics were predictable and on paper seemed sensible enough: keep moving, attack in spurts and try to land the left hand from the southpaw stance. The left jab, the constant pressure of the much bigger man and the threat of Klitschko's right hand almost immediately negated such tactics, however.
It seemed to me that almost every time Ibragimov made as if to throw a punch there was the left jab in his face. The jab almost seemed to follow Ibragimov around the ring. He was never able to get into position to make a serious charge.
By the later rounds Klitschko was making it look almost easy, stepping away to let Ibragimov's swings and hooks fall short, then coming back in again with the jab.
The crowd became restless, but while I am probably in the distinct minority I did not mind the clinical and technical performance.
Against a shifty and shorter opponent, Klitschko did not want to throw too many right hands in case he overshot the mark and looked clumsy. The jab was working beautifully. There was always the risk that one of Ibragimov's swings would hit him flush should he get careless. He was probably thinking: "Why change anything?"Â
As for Ibragimov, he was in an almost impossible situation. On the outside he was being jabbed all night, yet to try to attack would mean the very real chance of getting hit very hard indeed by the right hand that Klitschko had cocked and ready to throw.
Ibragimov felt that right hand when he was pushed back into a squatting position on the ropes in the ninth round (referee Wayne Kelly would have been within the rules to have called this a knockdown).
There was a reason that Ibragimov did not just go in and try to make a fight of it, and that reason was the Klitschko right hand.
Ibragimov's occasional rushes got him nowhere, with Klitschko either backing off or clinching. I think that Emanuel Steward would have liked to have seen Klitschko fire punches at such moments, but Ibragimov's attacks were brief and sudden and I always get the impression that Klitschko's first priority in these situations is not to get hit. There was never a sustained effort by Ibragimov, but the sporadic surges seemed to unsettle Klitschko a little, and by the time he was ready to punch, Ibragimov was off and away again.
I could understand the crowd's impatience, but Ibragimov's style made it an awkward night for Klitschko. Ibragimov showed a sturdy chin â€" one punch was never going to get the job done against him â€" and Klitschko wasn't able to land the right anywhere near consistently enough to break down the rival champion.
The landslide decision win leaves Klitschko in possession of three belts â€" IBF, WBO, IBO â€" with two to go in his unification quest. He would be a big favourite over the winner of the WBA title rematch between Ruslan Chagaev and Nikolai Valuev or the victor in the WBC title fight between Oleg Maskaev and Samuel Peter â€" he already holds a win over Peter, of course. If there was any doubt about Klitschko being the best heavyweight in the world, the easy win over Ibragimov surely removed it.
Players who bet on Klitschko by decision or took the "over 9.5"Â proposition had a good night. A late show of Ibragimov money brought the odds on Klitschko down to a very bettable -300 or thereabouts at some sportsbooks. Sometimes the late money turns out to be the smart money, but not always: there was a late rush of money on Kelly Pavlik over Jermain Taylor in Las Vegas the previous weekend, but the last-minute players bumped up Winky Wright to the position of clear favourite over Bernard Hopkins.
I had expected Klitschko to be able to stop Ibragimov in the later stages of the fight but I cannot criticise him for outclassing a capable opponent who had made up his mind that if he could not win he definitely was not going to get knocked out.
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Graham Houston has been a boxing writer for nearly five decades. Since his first weekly column in the South London Advertiser in the early 1960s to becoming editor of Boxing News in 1974 to his first fight covered in Las Vegas - Salvador Sanchez vs Wilfredo Gomez at Caesars Palace in August 1980 - Graham has endured the trials and tribulations of the boxing world to become the American Editor of Boxing Monthly in 1992. He is the author of Superfists: The story of the Heavyweight Champions (Bounty Books, 1975). Graham Houston is the quintessential boxing writer. His website the "FIGHTWRITER" focuses on fight previews and analysis.
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