Eastern Bloc set to rule with iron fist

George Kimball America At Large"I've learned to hate Russians All through my whole life" - Bob Dylan, With God On Our Side

Don't look now, but a Communist takeover is underfoot. What they're taking over this time is the heavyweight division.

Should the trend continue, you could find yourself reading stories about boxing's search for a Great Black Hope.

It probably wasn't what the late Nikita Khrushchev had in mind back in 1963 when he warned Americans "We will bury you!", but there now looms the distinct possibility that by midsummer all four of the world's generally recognised heavyweight titles will belong to products of the former Soviet Union.

Last Saturday night in Cleveland, the unheralded Belarussian Sergei (The White Wolf) Liakhovich outbrawled Lamon Brewster to win the World Boxing Organisation (WBO) belt, thus joining the 7ft Russian Nicolay Valuev, who already owned the World Boxing Association belt, in the championship circle.

Two weeks from Saturday in Mannheim, the Ukrainian Vladimir Klitschko will challenge for Chris Byrd's International Boxing Federation belt. And the World Boxing Council has ordered their champion, Hasim Rahman, to make his next defence against Oleg Maskaev of Kazakhstan (and formerly of the Soviet army boxing team).

Each of these latter match-ups represents a rematch. Back in 1999, Maskaev knocked out Rahman in the eighth round of their Atlantic City fight, and a year later Klitschko scored a unanimous decision over Byrd when they fought for the WBO title in Cologne.

Should both challengers prevail the second time around, it will doubtless lend newfound credence to the Domino Theory.

Should Byrd fall to Klitschko again later this month, the hope of the free world could next be riding on the prospects of Owen (What the Heck) Beck, who has been pencilled in to challenge Valuev in Hanover - on June 3rd, almost certainly before Maskaev-Rahman II could occur.

But while he is domiciled in Nashville, Beck was born in Negril, and even in the unlikely event he managed to defeat the self-proclaimed Beast of the East, Owen would doubtless emerge from the ring waving a Jamaican flag.

Although Eastern Bloc heavyweights have claimed pieces of the title - the Brothers Klitschko, sons of a colonel in the Soviet air force, come to mind - the last non-American Caucasian to own an undisputed heavyweight championship was Ingemar Johannson in 1959.

And before that it was Max Schmeling, who also brought a political debate to the proceedings, in that he would go on to serve as a paratrooper in Hitler's Wehrmacht.

The first indication US champions might be on the losing end of this latter-day Cold War came in December when Valuev outpointed John Ruiz, in a fight that took place in what used to be East Berlin.

The Red Menace rolled on last weekend when the unheralded Liakhovich whipped Brewster, who had won the WBO title in 2004 and successfully defended it three times.

(On the Liakhovich-Brewster undercard, fighting for the first time in 10 months, a rusty Kevin McBride stopped Byron Polley in four rounds; the Clones Colossus could wind up fighting one of the Soviet Bloc champions before the year is out.)

While no odds have been posted on Rahman-Maskaev just yet, the younger Klitschko is a 3 to 1 favourite to continue the trend when he meets Byrd on April 22nd.

If his advisors ever get around to telling him about them, George W Bush isn't going to be happy with these developments, and his friend Don King will be even less pleased.

A few months ago King appeared to have regained his stranglehold on the heavyweight division, but then in short order he lost Rahman (via a contractual loophole) to Bob Arum, Byrd tried to fly the coop via litigation, and Ruiz lost to the Russian Giant. The World's Greatest Promoter does retain a 50 per cent interest in the Beast from the East, but Valuev's German promoter, Wilfred Sauerland, appears to be calling the shots.

We can probably assume, on the other hand, King covered his backside before he turned Brewster loose with Liakhovich and thus has a piece of The White Wolf as well, so he hasn't been entirely cast out in the cold by what has been a Russian winter.

All in all, this could be the most significant heavyweight development since Rocky IV, when the steroid-addled Robo-commie Ivan Drago slew Apollo Creed in the ring, forcing Rocky Balboa to come out of retirement to avenge the American Way.

Who's going to defend the national honour this time? Barry Bonds?