What Does Klitschko Domination Mean for Boxing and the Heavyweight Division?

Imagine living in a world where the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox sat number 1 and 2 in the American League East, dominated their opponents without breaking a sweat but never faced each other. Imagine Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal never playing epic matches at Wimbledon and the French Open, their legacies and the fate of the men's tour at stake.

This is the state of the premier division in boxing, the heavyweight division. If you didn't know the particulars and merely knew that two men were crushing every single challenger and turning the division into their own personal playpen, you'd probably be pretty excited. That means there's going to be a hell of a fight when those two killers get in the ring, right?

Not when each of them shares the last name Klitschko. Heavyweight champions Wladimir Klitschko and Vitali Klitschko long ago vowed to never face each other in the ring. They also vowed to hold all four heavyweight belts simultaneously. With no fight lined up for the future and three of the four belts around their respective waists, they're not doing too badly.

It's not that you can blame the Klitschko brothers for this either. Catching a left hook on the chin is not exactly equivalent to Dom DiMaggio catching a fly ball that Joltin' Joe streaked to center. Hitting the hardest means a lot more in the squared circle than it does when Venus and Serena take turns bashing serves in an another duel for a major championship.

The Klitschko brothers aren't at fault here, but it's still having disastrous results on the heavyweight division and boxing as a whole. Could you imagine at any other point in the sport's history, a skillful, likeable American fighter such as Eddie Chambers challenging for the heavyweight championship of the world in a fight that was not even picked up by any American television network?

Mike Tyson just got a show on Animal Planet to race pigeons. But the Wladimir Klitschko vs. Eddie Chambers heavyweight title bout was passed over by the networks and hardly given any attention by the mainstream media. The rumors of an impossible and unsavory Tyson vs. Holyfield III match can get floated around, picking up attention and intrigue, but ask anybody to list a fighter or two in the heavyweight division rankings with a name not ending in -schko and you'd be out of luck.

What does it all mean for boxing?

At the time of this writing, it's clear that no other heavyweight boxer is up to the task of taking the belts from either Wladimir or Vitali. Maybe David Haye breaks through, or maybe Odlanier Solis proves to be the savior of the division. But until that time, it's on the rest of us to get with the program. It's not on the brothers to fight each other.

Boxing always shows a bias to past greats and legends from the ring, paying homage to former champions ahead of current greats. At the same time, the sport always looks to the future, scanning the horizons for the next superstar.

How about for a change we all live in the now? It's the Age of Klitschko, two dominating heavyweight champions who are a combined 13-0 in their present title reigns, with 11 stoppage wins.

Maybe another workmanlike performance by Wladimir Klitschko over Ruslan Chagaev or Sultan Ibragimov isn't enthralling. Maybe the prospects of the number 1 and 2 fighters never battling it out against one another is uneasy to accept. But imagine if these two guys weren't even here. Then we wouldn't even have dominance, we'd only have mediocre fighters exchanging belts with one another every other contest.

The fact that Wladimir and Vitali are brothers and will never fight each other is unfortunate. But the fact that boxing fans refuse to acknowledge their talent and domination, instead turning a blind eye to the entire division is even more so.