THE GREAT AMERICAN HEAVYWEIGHT

August 9th, 2006 - by Bert Sugar

Whatever happened to the American heavyweight champion? Remember when we thought it was our birthright, when one of boxing's favorite trivia questions was to name the three "foreign" heavyweight champions (answer: Schmeling, Carnera and Johannson) when even Ring magazine used the word "foreign" in front of their names?

Well, like everything else in this global era the heavyweight championship has been outsourced. Not just to any country, mind you, but to that portion of the world once known as just plain ol' Russia or the USSR, to places like Kazistan or Stan Musial or Stan Kent or Stan Getz.

And the names of three of the four heavyweight champions are more a "Who's He?" than a "Who's Who" and would prompt Butch Cassidy to ask the Sundance Kid "Who are all those guys?" As a brief refresher, their names are Wladimir Klitshko (IBF), Nicolay Valuev (WBA), and Sergei Liakhovich (WBO), names that would force Vanna White to fall down under the weight of all the letters in their names.

How did this ever happen? To start with, the fall of the Berlin wall brought the former Soviet fighters west to test their skills in the world market. Secondly, whereas in the past heavyweight champions had been heavyweights and not dreadnaughts, Marciano weighing l89 Joe Louis, 204, and Muhammad Ali 224--now heavyweights weigh 250 and up. (Here, take Nicoiay Valuev, who looks like the man Jack met at the top of the beanstalk, weighing 300-pounds and has more hair on his back than on his head.)

Boxing experienced somewhat of the same invasion of foreign-born fighters once before. It was back in the late '20s and early '30s, when heavyweights from all over the world rushed in to fill the void left by the retirements of Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney. In what took on the look of boxing's version off the League of Nations fighters like Otto von Porat, the moody Norwegian, Phil Scott, the horizontal Brit, Tom Heeny, the Hard Rock from Down Under, Paulino Uzcuduun, the Basque woodchopper, Vitterio Campolo, the Argentine giant, Knute Hansen, the collapsible Dane, and, of course, Max Schmeling, "the German Jack Dempsey," and Primo Carnera, "The Ambling Alp" all came to America in search of fame and championship.

Now we have a fourth expatriate, one Oleg Mashaev (32-5, with 25 KO's) attempting to make it a clean sweep for the Russians, challenging Hasim Rahman (4l-5-2 with 33 KO's) for his WBC belt. (It must be noted that Maskaev has been an American citizen since 1995 and says, "Whoever wins is going to be an American.")

Still, the bout, billed as "America's Last Line of Defense," has a rooting interest. For those fans who shout "USA...USA..." at every match-up of American versus somebodyorother from another country, it will be difficult to root against Rahman. Especially if they were weaned on early TV wrestling when, mirroring the temper of the times, wrestling offered up a whole Party Congress of no-goodnicks from central casting like Ivan Poddobny, Ivan Bulba, Professor Boris Malenko, Nikolai Volkoff and the like.

With Hasim Rahman the last American heavyweight champion left standing, will we root, as we have so often in the past, for "USA...USA" or for, as they used to say, "the better man to emerge victorious'?

That's what. makes this such an intriguing fight.