The easiest thing would be to conclude that they all come back and leave it at that. While Goliath did not make it back off his stool, it seems almost every other champion is trying to rekindle the sparks of the past. So the announcement earlier this year that 36-year-old Vitali Klitschko was returning to boxing hardly qualified as a shock. Boxers are, after all, sport's answer to Lazarus, launching more comebacks from the dead than any other athletes.
Yet the planned return of the former World Boxing Council champion is not quite that simple a story. At a time when the heavyweight division has become a joke nearly everywhere but in Germany and the Eastern Bloc countries, the return of the elder Klitschko on 22 September in Munich figures to inject some renewed interest in boxing's most important weight class if for no other reason than that it will mark the beginning of a different sort of title quest.
If Klitschko can repel the advances of towering 6ft 6ins American Jameel McCline at the Olympiahalle on the first night of what German promoters are calling Oktoberfist, rather than the more widely accepted Oktoberfest celebration, he will not only have won his first fight in three years but also have secured a guaranteed shot at the winner of October's Oleg Maskaev-Samuel Peter WBC heavyweight showdown.
If Klitschko can follow a successful return to the ring in Munich by regaining the WBC title he once briefly held before giving it up after a seemingly endless string of back and knee injuries broke his spirit as well as his body, he and his younger brother, Wladimir, will have become the first brother act to simultaneously hold any recognised form of the heavyweight championship. In an era where the title is as fractured as it is today, you wouldn't exactly have to be a family of 12 quintuplets to create such a possibility but it still would be a historic moment and, these days, one takes one's boxing history wherever it can be found.
Perhaps more importantly, though, if Vitali Klitschko's comeback results in his winning at least a quarter of the divided title, it would all but guarantee that there will be no unification of the most important championship in boxing anytime soon. The reason, for once, would at least be a good one.
Long before Vitali decided to come out of his self-imposed exile, the Klitschko brothers had made clear they would never fight each other over a mere boxing title, regardless of how big a payday such a showdown would generate. Both continue to insist that this is the case and not even the most sceptical of boxing promoters questions the truth of that.
The same can be said of the validity of Klitschko's immediate insertion into the heavyweight title picture against McCline, a towering presence who has lost three challenges for the championship himself, including one that ended with him at the feet of Klitschko's not-so-little brother five years ago. While he has been away from the ring for 2_ years, so little has changed in the heavyweight world that the elder Klitschko's reinstallation to the top of the division's list of title contenders cannot really be quarrelled with.
“It's time to return,'' the former champion explained in front of a packed press conference in Munich when the McCline fight was finally announced. It took nearly six months for that pronouncement to be made because the usual legal battles had to be fought first after Klitschko's manager, Shelly Finkel, tried to insist his fighter deserved an immediate title shot as a result of the WBC having awarded Klitschko “Emeritus” status upon his retirement.
College professors, at times, are given emeritus status and an office to go with it upon their retirement. They usually don't get their old classroom back, however. The same ended up being Klitschko's fate.
Top contender Samuel Peter had already twice won title elimination bouts to decide who would next fight Maskaev and it was obvious even to the WBC that any court would uphold his rightful challenge so all sides moved to the next avenue normally taken in such a situation. A payoff.
Peter was asked what it would take for him to agree to step aside and allow Klitschko to make his return an immediate world title fight. When he said $2.5 million, it all but guaranteed that wouldn't happen. After Peter began to realise how little he would net from that figure, it was decided that he'd finally get the title shot he'd twice fought for while Klitschko would seek his first payday elsewhere.
Enter Jameel McCline.
“I never left boxing,” Klitschko claimed. “I had to take a break in my professional career due to an injury I received. Once I was well, I returned to training. I returned to win back the championship title.”
Few doubt that he might well do just that, what with a less-than-formidable championship lineup that presently includes his brother (International Boxing Federation), Maskaev (WBC), Uzbekhistan's Ruslan Chagaev (World Boxing Association) and Russia's Sultan Ibragimov (World Boxing Organization). There is no one in that bunch who will ever be mistaken for Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, Muhammad Ali or George Foreman. Lennox Lewis would tell you there's no Lennox Lewis in that group either and who would argue the point with him?
What exists is a landscape as barren as Siberia, one so bleak that the return of a 6ft 71/2ins former champion with limited skills but knockout power will be greeted with more enthusiasm than it probably deserves. It's not that the other guys can't fight. It's just that they seem so colourless. In a sport where somehow both Hasim Rahman and John Ruiz can retain contender status, Shannon Briggs can briefly wear a champion's belt and aged Evander Holyfield can land himself another title shot without beating a Top 10 contender, why wouldn't the return of the towering Klitschko not at least spur some renewed interest in the division again?
Klitschko believes it will and so do the people around him. More importantly, he believes the same thing most boxing observers believe about the champions who have followed him into the heavyweight throne room.
“He sees he can beat all those guys and reclaim his title,'' said Tom Loeffler, the American promoter of the brothers Klitschko. “That, plus his health being 100%, is why Vitali decided to return. He and his brother never fulfilled their dream of being world champions at the same time. If he'd won the election for Mayor of Kiev and moved forward in his political career, he wouldn't have had time to do this but, when he didn't become mayor and his body began to respond to therapy, I thought he'd fight again.
“I think it's one of those rare situations where the layoff will be good for him. He wasn't like a lot of fighters after he retired. He never blew up in weight. He was always fit. He tested his back and his knee thoroughly before he decided to come back. He's put his political aspirations on hold for now and he's back because he's always known, from a skill perspective, that he was better than those other guys.”
Klitschko seems likely to get to prove that point by the end of the year because, although McCline is an amiable man, he's also a 37-year-old fighter who has failed to win every time a big opportunity has arisen. That includes not only being stopped in the 10th round by Klitschko's younger brother in 2002 but also finding a way to lose a title fight to then-IBF champion Chris Byrd despite dropping Byrd twice and having him in serious trouble in the second round of their confrontation.
Add to that the knee injury he suffered against then-WBA champion Nikolay Valuev that caused him to fall without being hit in the third round of his third title challenge (in January 2007) and one has to conclude that, whatever ring rust Klitschko may have, it will soon be knocked off at the expense of McCline.
“The upcoming fight will be a starting point of our return to the professional ring and then to a championship fight,'' promised Klitschko's German trainer, Fritz Sdunek.
McCline, 38-7-3 (23 abbreviated wins), meanwhile, talked bravely in Munich about what the fight meant to him, insisting, “I received a lot of criticisms in my past fights but this time you'll see how dangerous I can be. I'll be ready for Vitali.”
Perhaps he will be but the wiseguys and the wise money are both firm in their belief that the return of Vitali Klitschko will not end with Jameel McCline. In fact, they insist he is the perfect foil for such a situation, an opponent who looks far tougher than he actually is.
Whatever the truth of the matter, Loeffler insisted from Los Angeles that the choice of McCline was one made in the belief that the former champion wanted a stiff test before trying to regain his title. You will have to decide on your own the true definition of the word stiff in this case but be assured of one thing: Tom Loeffler believes it is a fight that will sell.
It already has in Germany and it will be shown on HBO in the States with an eye towards resurrecting Klitschko with the deft use of the images from his fight with Lewis four years ago as a reminder of what he is capable of at his best and most courageous. That was the night Klitschko came to the Staples Center in Los Angeles and fought bravely against a less-than-well-prepared Lewis, who agreed to take on Klitschko as a late substitute.
Trading heavy blows with the champion from the outset, Klitschko turned the fight into a slugfest until his left eye began to bleed from a divot that looked like it could have been produced only by the pitching wedge of Tiger Woods.
Klitschko fought on that night with the left side of his face being smeared with his own plasma until referee Lou Moret stopped the fight despite Klitschko's heated protests that he be allowed to press on. Although he lost that night, Vitali Klitschko won the respect of fight fans around the world, many of whom had remained sceptical about the strength of his heart ever since he'd quit on his stool in 2000 with a torn rotator cuff in the ninth round despite holding a wide lead on the judges' scorecards against Chris Byrd.
It took his bravery against Lewis to erase that memory. But, when he was then hit with a string of back and knee problems that kept forcing the postponement of a fight with Rahman after Lewis had retired and Klitschko had won the vacant title against Corrie Sanders, those doubts about him resurfaced.
Klitschko had only one title defence on his resume by then, a lopsided win over Danny Williams in which he dropped the former British champion in four different rounds before the bout was halted, and so questions remained about him until he finally announced he was leaving boxing for good following knee surgery.
One lost mayoral election in Kiev and 2_ years later, he's back and within one victory of challenging for the WBC title and a place in history. What that challenge will mean for boxing's most important and most demeaned division remains to be seen but his intentions are clear.
“I understand this fight will be a test for me,” said Klitschko, 35-2 (34 stoppages). “I will do my best to be ready for it. I will be prepared for this fight. I rule out losing this fight. Only after this fight will I think about the championship.”
That may be the case for Vitali Klitschko, the latest champion to retire from retirement and return to the ring, but it's not what anyone else in boxing is thinking.
“He didn't want to come back and fight a non-competitive opponent,” Loeffler said of Klitschko first seeking out Maskaev before settling for McCline. “That's why he wanted to fight Maskaev immediately.
“Nothing is guaranteed in boxing but we have an agreement with the WBC that the winner of Maskaev-Peter will fight Vitali. We feel he's a special guy. A guy who can come right back and win the title. He's the type of guy, when he's healthy, who can beat all these guys.
“After that, we'll see what comes next but, in an ideal world, he and his brother would both like to have two of the titles. That way, they'd be all in the family.”
All in the family and, in an odd way, utterly and historically unified.
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