Alexander Povetkin

Apparently their heavyweight championship fight on October 5 will do very well at the gate as all 14 000 seats have been sold out. Tickets ranging from 90 EUR/120 US$ to 6665 EUR/9000 US$ were no longer available at the end of last week. The fight set one financial record already when Russian promoter Vladimir Hryunov bid $23,333,330 to stage the fight and outbid more than three times K2 Promotions and Sauerland Event.

Two Olympic champions in the ring should always mean a great match unless one of them is called Audley Harrison. In this case one of the champs is unbeaten while the other has three KO defeats on his record. Ironically the unbeaten Povetkin is the underdog in this fight. His last outing against a serious opponent – the cruiser weight champion Marco Huck (Muamer Hukić) – did not leave a good impression. He out boxed and out punched Huck easily but his shape was substandard and his conditioning betrayed him in the championship rounds. Only his amateur boxing skills and survival instincts helped him hear the final bell when he barely stood on his feet and fell into the arms of his corner right after the bell. After this spurious performance Povetkin boosted up his confidence with two early KO wins against softer opposition – a faded Hasim Rahman and a Polish heavyweight by the name of Andrzej Wawrzyk.

HBO is working to finalize a deal to show the October 5th fight between IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (60-3, 51 KO’s) and WBA champion Alexander Povetkin (26-0, 18 KO’s) live in the United States, according to Dan Rafael. If HBO can swing this, it will be a big deal for American boxing fans, because they don’t get to see too many fights of the Klitschkos anymore.

HBO is selective in which fights of the Klitschkos they televise in the U.S, and rightfully so with Wladimir facing the likes Jean Marc Mormeck, Francesco Pianeta, and Mariusz Wach in the past two years. If HBO had aired any of those mismatches, it would have likely brought in poor ratings.

“The contract has not yet been signed because there are still too many not agreed upon clauses in the contract. At this moment there are still too many questions, to which team Povetkin has no answers. All the answers from our side have already been taken care of. There is good communication between us, but when it comes to the official talk, all of a sudden there are questions. I hope that we can solve all the issues and finally sign the contract. If not, we will move forward without Povetkin,” stated Wladimir Klitschko.

I am assuming that the questions and issues that Wladimir is referring to are the drug testing and the financial agreement. Of course K2 promotions is looking to get the bigger cut of the money pie, as they should. The drug testing issue also has numerous ways of being solved, ways that would clearly work for both sides. So what is holing up the fight? Is one side trying to avoid fighting the other?