According to the World Boxing Council, Vitali Klitschko is "a champion emeritus," which could mean he will be wearing a pacemaker instead of carrying a belt into the ring Saturday night in Berlin against Samuel Peter.
Peter is called the defending champ, which presumably means he has been active instead of in emeritus. But who really knows? Only a Professor Emeritus of Linguistics can interpret WBC-speak. The ongoing pugilistic propaganda is enough to generate some nostalgia for Riddick Bowe and the day he dropped the WBC's lime-green strap of plastic into the garbage in London in 1992.
That's where the WBC belonged and still belongs -- in the trash and in emeritus. Bowe knew what he was talking about. So, too, did Peter when he stormed off the stage Monday during a press conference. There's nothing new about all the stupid titles and the dumb and dumber ways they are described. The WBC has a subspecies known as an Intercontinental. It sounds like an airport terminal. It isn't. Those Intercontinental titles are always vacant.
I mention this because these titles are as meaningless to the fighters as they are to the fans. If an emeritus can still fight, then Klitschko will beat Peter. There will be a new WBC champ. A former World Boxing Organization champion, Sergei Liakhovich, knows that. No matter how the WBC or some other acronym describes it, Liakhovich doesn't have any illusions about what confronts him in his attempt to regain a title after only two fights in the past two years -- successive losses to Shannon Briggs and Nikolay Valuev.
"What it is, it is," said Liakhovich, who figures he needs a fight or two to move back into position for shot at a title. "I move forward."
Mike Tyson used to say "Keep it real." Tyson never could. But Liakhovich does in a blunt and stoic fashion that sweeps aside the frauds and fools who always seem to be in an entourage or in the way.
"I want my title back, I want it back real bad," he said.
But losses, no matter how improbable, come with a price. Liakhovich understands that. He is willing to pay the toll, which includes frustration. There had been talks for Liakhovich to fight in August. Ha trained at Central Boxing near downtown Phoenix in hopes of his first bout since losing to the 7-foot-2 Valuev. Never happened. Now, Liakhovich waits again for another opportunity.
"I'm ready to go, really ready," said Liakhovich, who expects to go back to work after new trainer Tommy Brooks returns from work on The Contender in Singapore. "By life also teaches me to be patient."
At 32, Liakhovich, who looked like the best heavyweight in the world more than two years ago when he got up from a knockdown and beat Lamon Brewster, isn't exactly a young lion anymore. But he has time, perhaps as many as five years, to reclaim a title he lost so dramatically when Briggs knocked him through the ropes and onto a table in a stoppage in the last second of a 12-round fight at Chase Field in Phoenix in November 2006. Liakhovich, who said he was limited by a shoulder injury, was leading on all of the judges' cards. In about the time it takes an accident to occur, however, his career suffered a reversal.
Subtract that one second, and it might be Liakhovich in a title defense Saturday. Things changed that quickly and that radically. But Liakhovich doesn't ask for sympathy. Just realism. He rediscovered that a few weeks ago in a return to his hometown, Vitebsk, Belarus. He lives in Scottsdale these days. There had been an occasional trip home, but only for a few days.
This time, however, Liakhovich returned for a few weeks. He spent time with his dad, a laborer. He saw his mom. He walked streets of a city in a country that has changed.
"It was like they had built a new country," Liakhovich said. "I didn't recognize it."
