Well they’re also boring because he’s a safety-first fighter and frankly heavyweights just aren’t that thrilling these days period. Most of them aren’t what we’d call pure athletes — more athletic than me, sure. But Vitali’s movements are awkward and stiff at this point, and to most people his punching looks awful. I am loathe to bring up Ali or Tyson since that’s what everyone does, but seriously, they had style. Vitali does not. The “form” or technique that features so heavily in the lower weight divisions is missing from his arsenal. He fights in a very ugly manner. He’s so robotic that it doesn’t look like HE’S throwing with real intent either, though of course he’s so strong he doesn’t have to load up.

I mean, watch the fight with Johnson again — or, for your own sake, don’t, and just remember how it looked. Johnson was pure garbage out there, an embarrassing “performance.” But Klitschko wasn’t exactly eye candy, and hasn’t been in any of his return fights. The best he’s looked was against Sam Peter, because Peter seemed like he wanted to fight, he just couldn’t because Vitali smushed his face in with jabs all night. Arreola seemed like he wanted to fight, but Vitali’s robot dance around the ring, superior knowledge of how to box, and, well, superiority in most every way beat Arreola down. JC Gomez and Johnson had no interest in fighting Klitschko, just cashing in.

But was Klitschko actually EXCITING in any of those fights? Did he ever really intend to be? Nah. He’s tougher than Wladimir (in that he has a better chin), but I think Klitschko “apologists” tend to paint Vitali in a really rosy (or bloody) light 99.9% because of the war with Lennox, which was a tremendous fight, but hardly representative of Vitali’s (or Lennox’s) body of work.

Vitali is a tremendous boxer and I give him all the respect in the world, but it’s not just opponents being afraid to tangle with him (which they are). It’s that he’s unappealing to watch, too, especially for more casual fans, or newer fans who didn’t come to the sport because of the heavyweights, but because of exciting, more fluid and more dynamic fighters in the lower classes.

But either way, he’s a nice guy, great fighter, and I think he’s a credit to boxing. I’m not hating or anything. I think both Klitschkos are neither exciting nor the detriment to the sport that many make them out to be. They are — as the truth usually is — somewhere in between. They’re very good-to-great fighters surrounded by an entire weight class of guys that are either afraid of them or have no chance against them simply because they aren’t good enough or dedicated enough. Their fights are generally going to be unexciting washouts, yet I feel they deserve their respect.

(Probably more than I intended to type at first…)

If David Haye — who is fast, strong and mobile — can’t do it (and I don’t think he can), then there’s nobody.

KJ wins my 2009 Award for “worse individual perfromance as a boxer.” Man, it was painful to watch.

Like MRBILL says, it was free, so I’m not going to harp on it.

Eh, free until that HBO bill comes every month, unless you’re paying it for such great original shows as “Big Love” and endless airings of Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. Fights being “free” doesn’t excuse them being shit, really. I was happier to have paid to see Cotto-Jennings and Pavlik-Rubio than to watch Klitschko-Johnson for free.