FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE

August 14, 2006 - by Ron Borges

America's "last line of defense'' now hails from Kazakhstan not Kansas.

The moment Oleg Maskaev's sweeping left hook crashed into the side of World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Hasim Rahman's face Saturday night with just over two minutes remaining in their struggle to wrest control of the heavyweight title from each other, Maskaev became no longer a Russian emigre, which he has been for the last 11 years, but an American success story.

It was at that moment that Rahman, who was portrayed by promoter Bob Arum as "American's Last Line of Defense'' in the week's leading up to this fight because the other three portions of the heavyweight title are held by Eastern European boxers from the former Soviet Union, fell to the floor for the first time that Maskaev's Russian Fable became an Immigrant's Song.

When Rahman rose on shaky legs after being clipped by an unseen left hand and a following right in the final minutes of what was an often brutally inelegant battle, his time as WBC champion was clearly coming to a close. Unable to defend himself, Rahman could only struggle to hold on, his reflexes unresponsive except for the one that told him to wrap Maskaev in a bear hug in the feint hope the sound of the church bells chiming in his head would soon fade.

They did not. As Rahman fought to keep himself upright, Maskaev struggled to get enough punching room to write the end to his fistic fairy tale. To get it he first pushed Rahman to the floor, which referee Jay Nady ruled a slip because the half-conscious Rahman had not actually been hit this time. But when the fallen champion got up again his face bore the wary look of the wounded lion.

Unable to make his legs work or to force his arms to move, he was helpless as Maskaev closed in and finished him off with an unremitting string of a half dozen crushing right hands to the head, the last of which forced Rahman to sit down on the bottom strand of rope as Nady leaped in and stopped the fight at 2:17 of the final round.

At that moment Maskaev became the fourth former Soviet bloc fighter to win a quarter of the heavyweight title, the first time in boxing history such a state existed. Long a division dominated by Americans, the Eastern bloc had taken over the most coveted prize in boxing. How long they hold it will be debated until a new champion is crowned but for now Maskaev, Wladimir Klitschko (IBF), Sergei Liakovich (WBO) and seven-foot Nicolay Valuev (WBA) rule the division. How this happened is a question already being seriously discussed, with many claiming it is because the Americans who today might be heavyweight champion are instead power forwards in the NBA or linebackers in the NFL.

While there is some truth to that, the dethroned Rahman, who came up the hard way in boxing with no amateur experience and no high-powered promoter behind him, had another thought on the matter that seemed at least as reasonable as the simplistic viewpoint that America's biggest heavyweights now opt for more lucrative and less demanding sports.

"I think we're a little spoiled,'' said Rahman when asked why the slump among U.S.-born heavyweights. "We make too much money too quick (in the U.S.). We lose sight of the grand prize.''

That remains the heavyweight title belt Maskaev left the ring with at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas. Many will say the 37-year-old champion didn't earn his shot at the title despite the 10-fight win streak that led up to it because none of those victories came over a formidable contender. In fact, prior to his resurrection three years ago, Maskaev himself had been knocked out in three of his previous five fights and seemed at 34 to be finished after once appearing to have a bright future after, coincidentally, knocking Rahman out in 1999 when both were rising prospects.

For whatever reason Maskaev's career began to wane at that point while Rahman picked himself up, dusted himself off and fought his way back so successfully he twice won the heavyweight championship, once by knocking out Lennox Lewis and then by winning it back more by virtue of boxing politics than anything else but nevertheless regaining control of the WBC's portion of the belt.

Maskaev, in contrast, was supposed to be the kind of ritualistic tuneup fight one gets before facing a major challenge like, say, a unification bout with Klitschko, who is widely regarded now as the best of the four Eastern European heavyweights though a vulnerable one with a suspect chin and debatable stamina when under duress. Whether or not that was what Rahman himself was thinking didn't matter much once he got hit that sweeping left hook, although he did seem to dismiss Maskaev before the fight as more of a nuisance than a threat.

Even Lewis was predicting a Rahman victory, saying he thought the bout would end not the way it did but with Maskaev being counted out.

Skepticism about his late rise was something Maskaev had grown used to however, so ignoring it was not difficult. As it turned out, neither was refuting it.

"They thought Oleg should retire,'' his bombastic promoter, Dennis Rappaport, said after the fight. "This shows you what can happen when you believe in yourself. When you work hard enough anything can happen. He proved that tonight.''

Certainly he proved anything can happen in this era of lightweight heavyweights, massive men in size but not in skill. Every champion, and most of the challengers as well, are flawed fighters lacking the kind of daunting power of a Joe Louis or a George Foreman or the consummate boxing skills of a Muhammad Ali or Larry Holmes or the resilient tenacity and force of will of a Jack Dempsey or Evander Holyfield.

In light of the present field, one wonders now if Lewis regrets his decision to retire three years ago after stopping Klitschko's older brother, Vitali, who is also now in retirement. What must he think sitting at ringside broadcasting fights like Saturday night's for HBO Pay-Per-View when he sees the likes of Maskaev, Liakovich, Valuev and the younger Klitschko now wearing portions of the belt he defended with crushing authority until deciding he'd had enough of boxing and retiring while still the universally recognized champion in the opinion of most fight fans?

Lewis is gone and not likely to return however, although all of them eventually seem to. Regardless, the present now belongs to the Russian bloc, a foursome that has taken over heavyweight boxing with no reason to believe they will relinquish their titles any time soon.

Yet Maskaev, a wise marketer as well as a ferocious puncher, cautioned both before the fight and again after it that he is not simply an invader from the land of Ivan the Terrible. He is, as he says, "a proud Russian-American,'' a point Liakhovich seconded after the fight while making his own pitch for a unification fight with Klitschko.

"This is not about where this guy comes from,'' the WBO champion said. "He' is from Kazakhstan but is an American citizen now. I don't understand (the talk of the Eastern bloc's seizing control of the division). It is like your grandparents all came to America but they lived here and became Americans. It is no different with Oleg.''

In other words, with Rahman out of the picture Oleg Maskaev has become the great American hope, at least until such time as someone like aged but seemingly ageless James Toney or former U.S. Olympian Calvin Brock wins back one or more portions of the championship.

Maskaev was often bothered by the portrayal before the fight of Rahman as the last American hope in the heavyweight division because he sees himself as American as any immigrant who ever came to the U.S., got a green card and went to work building a new life until, some years later, it culminates in becoming a citizen of your adopted country. Maskaev quietly spoke about that whenever asked before the fight, pointing out that he had come to America 11 years ago and became a citizen three years ago, adding that his youngest daughter was born in the U.S. and thus was automatically an American citizen from birth. What more, he wondered, does someone have to do in a country where nearly everyone's family came from somewhere else?

Now splitting his time between homes in Staten Island, N.Y. and Sacramento, Calif., Maskaev is the classic coming to America tale of a man who sought to better himself by leaving a war-torn homeland for the promise of what he got Saturday night. The promise of a chance to make something more of himself than was possible in the difficult circumstances of an emerging nation like Kazakhastan.

In some ways, he is as classic an American story as anyone who ever came to these shores, dating all the way back to the Pilgrims. But that seemed to matter less by fight time than his other story of redemption, the one of how he'd come back from being a forgotten fighter working alone in the corner of a New York gym until a trainer named Victor Valle, Jr., whose father once took Gerry Cooney to the brink of the heavyweight title, agreed to work with him and slowly came to believe he could do what he did Saturday night.

"I'd seen Rahman tapes and maybe around the sixth, seventh round, he starts losing momentum'' Valle predicted. "With the left hook, the right hand and body punches, Oleg will take you out. Point blank, Rahman can't take a punch. if a guy like Monte Barrett can rock him in the later rounds, imagine what Oleg's going to do to him.''

The rest, like Rahman's reign, is now history. There is a new champion. Four of them in fact. None American-born but at least one a living reminder that the American Dream remains alive in the hearts of many.

"I hope I showed that you can't give up,'' Maskaev said. "You have to believe and keep fighting.''

That's what he did in the early rounds, when Rahman's jab kept rapping him hard in the face, stalling his forward progress and causing him to wonder how this night might turn out. It was what he did at the end too, battling both Rahman and growing exhaustion to find the opening he'd been looking for.

"He was a little better than I was on the inside,'' Maskaev (33-5, 26 KO) said. "His jab was very effective. But I got used to him as the fight wore on. I knew I was going to win. I believed up to the last minute I would win the fight."

And so he did, leaving the division shrouded in a growing mystery over which one of these Russians is the rightful heir to Lewis. It is an issue they all say they want to settle, just as many of the Americans who preceded them used to say although they seldom acted on those impulses.

Now it is the product of East European poverty, the same breeding ground that produces champions in the United States, that holds the most prized titles in boxing and will set the agenda for the next year or so. Who knows what they will do with it?

"People want to see who the real heavyweight champion of the world is,'' Liakhovich said after Maskaev's victory. "I say to the public, I want to fight Wladimir Klitschko. Oleg had a tough fight. He needs rest. But me, I'm ready. If for some reason (Shannon) Briggs (Klitschko's likely next opponent) falls out for Nov. 11, sign me up. I'm ready.''

So is Oleg Maskaev, a Kazakhstan-born, Russian-bred American success story.