Wladimir Klitschko to fight again in NYC

Wladimir will be making his 18th title defense on April 25th at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY. This will be his first fight in America in almost seven years, after his last complete and utter snoozefest at Madison Square Garden against Sultan Ibragimov. This also marks the second of his three-fight contract with HBO. No official opponent has been named at this time, but it looks like it will be Bryant Jennings who ultimately gets the call, and ESPN suggests the negotiations will be finalized within the next couple of weeks.

"The fight will be at the Barclays Center and we are very, very pleased," Bernd Boente, Klitschko's manager, told ESPN.com on Wednesday night. "The contract is not signed yet but we have a handshake deal and we are getting everything finalized. It's a really good deal for both sides. We are all looking forward to a big event."

"The Barclays offer was better (than Madison Square Garden's)," Boente said. "We really like the people at the Garden. I really like Joel Fisher (executive vice president of MSG Sports). We had fights with Wladimir and (older brother) Vitali there, but the overall cooperation is better with Barclays. They are putting huge marketing money into this and that is important."

If the Jennings negotiations happen to fall through, he'll still fight on that day at the Barclays, but they'll just swap in some other opponent (who probably won't be very highly rated).