KLITSCHKO MAKES HIS POINT
WINS BY TKO!

The heavyweight division desperately needed a moment such as Klitschko gave it. A moment so fiercely one-sided that it left no doubt that Wladimir Klitschko is again the future of heavyweight boxing.

Sunday, April 23 - by Ron Borges

The only difference 5 1/2 years made was that Wladimir Klitschko got to go home early this time.

The last time Klitschko faced International Boxing Federation heavyweight champion Chris Byrd he knocked him to the floor twice but was unable to rid himself of Byrd's confusing defensive slickness, settling for a lopsided decision on a night Byrd would later say was the worst of his career. Saturday night was worse than that. Much worse.

In the passing years, Klitschko lost the WBO title and became a man with unanswered questions about the tensile strength of his chin and the level of his stamina. Byrd, meanwhile, captured the IBF title as an undersized heavyweight in a world of giants and held it longer than any recent champion, keeping a grasp on his share of the title for nearly four years, through four title defenses. But the passage of time and relative inactivity combined with Klitschko's towering presence to conspire against the 35-year-old Byrd Saturday night at SAP Arena in Mannheim, Germany and what resulted was more than a dethronement of one champion and the coronation of a new king of the heavyweight division. What resulted was a decapitation.

The heavyweight division desperately needed a moment such as Klitschko gave it. A dominating, destructive moment. A moment so fiercely one-sided that it left no doubt of at least one thing - until someone proves otherwise Wladimir Klitschko is again the future of heavyweight boxing.

How long that future lasts remains to be seen because he was facing the perfect foil in Byrd. He was in with a man six inches shorter and nearly 30 pounds lighter, a man who lacked the kind of destructive punching power to test Klitschko's suspect mandible or the size to combat the long left jab and straight right hands behind it that had destroyed Byrd when they first met. If styles make fights, and they do, Klitschko's was one Chris Byrd had no business messing with.

Although Byrd (39-3-1) insisted before the fight he would perform differently this time, he did not because he could not. Klitschko imposed his will and his left jab on him from the opening bell until he finally split his face open at :41 of Round 7 with a right hook that sent the champion to the floor for the second time. When Byrd got up he walked blindly into the ropes, staring vacantly into the crowd. Referee Wayne Kelly spun him around and once he saw that the champion's already swelling left eye had been split open and his face was smeared an ugly crimson, as if it were a portrait painted by an angry Picasso with only one color, blood red, on his palette, he didn't need a second opinion. The fight, which is too strong a word, was over.

To call this a fight is to call smoldering incense a conflagration.

This was no fight. This was a Ukrainian mugging, a destruction so one sided even Byrd would say later, "I never hit him. Not the way he hit me.''

Actually he never hit him at all, except for an occasional body shot that did nothing to compel Klitschko (46-3, 41 KO) to stop incessantly slamming an ever harder left jab into Byrd's face. That jab began to rock Byrd back more and more and as he concentrated on trying to find ways to parry it, the effort left him wide open for the straight right hand behind it that first hurt the champion in Round 2, drove him to the floor the first time in round 5 and may have finished his career in Round 7.

Byrd had no way to combat that long jab, which allowed Klitschko to fight comfortably at the distance he wanted the match to be contested.

Safely out of harm's way throughout, Klitschko dictated all the terms. The left hand kept drilling Byrd, preventing him from getting inside and blinding him to the more devastating right hands that came behind it. "Byrd didn't fight Wladimir,'' said Klitschko's trainer, Emanuel Steward. "He fought his left arm. He never saw the rights coming.''

The proof of that, if you needed anything more than the visual, was that when Byrd returned to his corner after the fifth round he asked his father, Joe, who has trained him all his life, "What'd I get hit with?''

The old man, who knows a thing or two about beatings both given and taken, replied, "Right hand.'' He offered no salient suggestions about how to avoid this in the future beyond urging him to move his head, perhaps knowing by then, as the crowd of over 14,000 blood thirsty Klitschko supporters already sensed, that there was really nothing to say. No strategic changes were going to alter the outcome. One man was so clearly the superior of the other that there was nothing to discuss, even when Kelly came over after that round and warned both Byrds, "He's getting hit with too many punches.''

Nobody knew that better than Chris Byrd but there was nothing he could do to stop the avalanche. Klitschko was younger, bigger, faster and possessed with the perfect style to keep a fading, 35-year-old champion whose speed was no longer what it had been when he took a similar beating 5 1/2 years ago at bay. To define what happened in its simplest terms is to say Wladimir Klitschko did whatever he wanted for as long as Chris Byrd could take it. Or at least for as long as Kelly could watch it.

"It was like a musician playing notes,'' Klitschko would later lyrically describe it. If so, it was Jimi Hendrix on guitar or Miles Davis blowing the horn. It was a musician playing an angry tune bursting with raw emotion and a fearsome beat.

With so one-sided a victory Klitschko became the third straight Eastern European fighter to capture a portion of the heavyweight title, a trend that began in December when Nicolay Valuev dethroned WBA champion John Ruiz and continued when Sergei Liakovich beat down Byrd's cousin, WBO titleholder Lamon Brewster, last month. Before long WBC champion Hasim Rahman must himself face another Eastern European challenger, Oleg Maskaev, who knocked him not only out but out of the ring not enough years back that either man has forgotten it.

What that means is before this year ends the grinding poverty found in so many parts of what was once the Soviet Union will have proven once again to be the spawning ground of champions. Always that is the fertile soil from which fighters spring, from the otherwise fallow ground of despair and desperation. From such circumstances have come giants like Klitschko and Valuev, who stand 6-6 and 7 feet respectively, and a hungry underdog like Liakovich. The best of them is clearly Klitschko, although what that means is yet to be fully understood.

How much that says about him will remain, for a bit longer, subject to debate until he is struck on the chin by someone with the power to render him unconscious and he stands up to it, but no one can deny him this: he did what he needed to do with Chris Byrd Saturday night in Germany. He destroyed him in a way no one else, save himself, had done before. He did not simply dethrone him, he dissected and destroyed him.

"I was never in the fight,'' Byrd admitted. "I got hit with all kind of punches. I got to give him credit. It's hard for me to fight him.''

Hard for him to fight Wladimir Klitschko and impossible for him to beat him. Not 5 1/2 years ago, not Saturday night, frankly, not ever.

Whether or not that's the case for the rest of the heavyweight division remains to be seen but a not unbiased observer believes boxing fans saw the future of the heavyweight division Saturday night on HBO for some time to come. "People have to start giving Wladimir his credit,'' Steward said after the fight. "He's established himself as the premier heavyweight. I don't see anyone coming up on the horizon, even in the amateurs, who will beat Wladimir.'' Certainly not Chris Byrd. Of that much we are all sure.