Word: ibragimov
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...third heavyweight title fight in Moscow in the last year, since the current wave of homegrown boxers has overtaken the division. An ex-Soviet fighter holds each of the four heavyweight championship belts: Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko (IBF), Kazak Oleg Maskaev (WBC), Uzbek Ruslan Chagaev (WBA), and the Russian Ibragimov...
...press, and then wandered out of the Khodinka Ice Palace and on into the sleet-slush shadows of central Moscow. Holyfield had just tried and failed to become boxing's heavyweight champion for a fifth time, having come to the place where such things are now attempted. Sultan Ibragimov retained his WBO belt in a 12-round decision...
...several rounds of shadow boxing in a ring erected awkwardly between the silks and crystal. Cameras shuttered away as the sparse Russian crowd ogled the man best known internationally for the Mike Tyson-made chunk that's still missing from the rim of his right ear. After Holyfield came Ibragimov, a champion whose humility bleeds into a bashfulness that sees him shy away from the cameras, even though he wears the belt of a champion...
...Ibragimov is sponsored by a local oil company, Nafta Moscow. It is just this sort of arrangement that Fedorov believes will perpetuate the current trend of Slavic champions. "We have a lot of rich companies that can have one boxer, or a team of boxers," says the promoter. "We have asked the government for more recommendations. They need only to tell these companies that this is the thing they need to do. To many companies, government opinion is very important." This new economic model, says Kathy Duva, CEO of Main Events, Holyfield's promoter, is "why we all need...
...Ringside seats cost $3,000. (By comparison, the top ticket for the recent, much-ballyhooed fight between Oscar De la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather at the MGM casino in Las Vegas were priced at $2,000.) The Ibragimov-Holyfield fight failed to live up to its lofty price tag, however, as the champ and challenger conducted a 12-round Krokus City pantomime. It was the case of a lionhearted, but aged ex-champ conserving his strength in order to go the distance against a belt-holding opponent who has benefited greatly from boxing's fall from primacy in the West...