AMERICA AT LARGE:HBO have announced they have no intention of televising any more Klitschko Brothers dog-and-pony shows from Germany

LAST MONTH, in announcing that his network was getting out of the Klitschko business, if not the heavyweight business, HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg suggested that the typical American boxing fan probably couldn’t distinguish Wladimir Klitschko from his brother Vitaly in a two-man line-up.

Between them the Ukraine-bred, German-based Klitschkos own three-quarters of the world's recognised heavyweight championships, but at this stage you'd have to say 34-year-old Wladimir has the upper hand on his 39-year-old brother, not because his championship has been augmented by Ringmagazine's belt, but mainly because, in terms of sheer constancy, he is on the verge of becoming the longest-reigning heavyweight champion since Joe Louis.

Wladimir won the IBF version of the title when he stopped Chris Byrd in April of 2006. That bout, like most of his subsequent defences, took place in Germany. Two years ago the younger Klitschko defeated Sultan Ibragimov to add the WBO belt to his collection, but his roster of victims does make Louis’ old “Bum of the Month Club” look like a regular murderer’s row.

The IBF’s regulations are somewhat arcane, but on one matter they seem clear: the champion must at least once a year defend his title against the highest-rated contender. Klitschko last satisfied this obligation in March of 2007 against the elderly Ray Austin.

In 2008, the Russian Alexander Povetkin, who had been the gold medallist at the 2004 Athens Games, loomed as the IBF’s mandatory challenger to Wladimir. A bout was arranged for Germany in December of that year, but was postponed when Povetkin injured himself, supposedly by tripping over the root of a tree while doing roadwork. A second attempt to stage the bout fell apart when Klitschko underwent shoulder surgery.

When the sides could not come to terms for the third attempt to stage the compulsory fight, the IBF ordered a purse bid. Klitschko’s promotional company, K2, was awarded the contract after bidding some €640,00 ($813,000), of which 75 per cent would go to the champion, 25 per cent to Povetkin. The bout was scheduled to take place in Germany in September, but two events late last month dramatically altered that picture.

Which represented the chicken and which the egg remains in the eye of the beholder, but at roughly the same time as Greenburg announced that HBO had no intention of televising any more Klitschko Brothers dog-and-pony shows from Germany, Teddy Atlas, the ESPN analyst who had signed on as Povetkin’s trainer, revealed he was withdrawing the Russian because he was not, at this stage in his career, ready to fight a Klitschko.

Nigerian Samuel Peter was promoted to be the opponent in the September fight in Frankfurt, a rematch of a 2006 bout in which Klitschko won an unanimous decision despite having been knocked down three times.

In any case, on July 13th, Povetkin was, in the estimate of the IBF, the number one heavyweight in the world. By July 30th he had become number 11. What happened during that period is of some interest.

On the evening of July 28th, in Philadelphia, Atlas arranged what was either “a glorified sparring session” or a low-level boxing match between Povetkin and 43-year-old Bruce Seldon, who 14 years earlier briefly owned the WBA heavyweight title, and whose licence is under suspension in American jurisdictions as the result of a failed drug test in 2009.

In an effort to replicate actual fight conditions, arrangements had been made for a referee, three judges, a timekeeper and even a ring announcer, all of whom were paid. But although the boxers fought three-minute rounds, sans headgear, there was apparently no ringside physician, no EMTs and no ambulance on hand, as would have been required by law had it been deemed a fight and not a sparring session. Nor was the bout approved by the Pennsylvania Boxing Commission, mainly because they, apparently, were not even told about it.

According to Thomas Hauser, who has reconstructed the event in a column for the Ring'sonline version, a concession stand sold refreshments for the benefit of the audience of slightly under a hundred spectators. Povetkin knocked Seldon down twice in the fourth round, after which the bout was stopped by the referee.

Having been apprised of the event after the fact, an evidently embarrassed Pennsylvania commission chairman Greg Sirb tried to minimise its significance. (Sirb even gave his imprimatur to Atlas’ description by officially terming it “a glorified sparring session”.) But as Hauser noted in his column, “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, most likely it’s a duck”.

Whether it was a sparring session or an outlaw fight, Povetkin v Seldon was followed two days later by the Russian’s demotion from first to 11th in the IBF ratings.

At least three things seem worth pointing out here.

One is that when the California commission reviewed the disgraced Antonio Margarito’s application for the reinstatement of his licence last month, one factor cited in denying his petition was that Margarito had engaged in sparring with unlicensed boxers while under suspension. This would in turn seem to suggest a degree of responsible oversight that calls into question the Pennsylvania commission’s disingenuous attempt to wash its hands of the matter.

Nor does the absence of qualified medical personnel look good. Just last weekend, at the Tomasz Adamek-Michael Grant fight in Newark, we witnessed an EMT crew pressed into service – not for Adamek or Grant, but for one of the former’s Polish supporters who had become so drunk before the main event that he fell down and literally couldn’t get up again. It seems reasonable to suggest, then, that if you’re going to put a hundred boxing fans together under the same roof, you probably ought to have an ambulance on standby.

But the most nagging question is this: what does it say about sanctioning bodies and their rankings that a man who has been rated the top heavyweight challenger in the world for the past two years needs to spar with Bruce Seldon more than he needs $2 million?