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The upcoming heavyweight title fight between Wladimir Klitschko and Ruslan Chagaev will have an American television home, as ESPN Classic has decided to show the fight live from Germany on Saturday afternoon, June 20.

Wladimir Klitschko and Ruslan Chagaev have agreed to fight on June 20 in Germany, and I suppose that's the best possible outcome after David Haye dropped out of the fight. But HBO has decided to pass on televising Klitschko vs. Chagaev, and that means that with just 12 days to go, we have no idea which American TV channel -- if any -- will be showing the fight.

The June 20 heavyweight title fight between Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye has been canceled, with Haye saying he won't be able to box because of an injury. Klitschko, however, says he still intends to show up and fight someone on June 20 at the Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, where around 50,000 tickets have already been sold.

I don't think any boxing match -- not even one as big as Ricky Hatton vs. Manny Pacquiao -- could sell out a football stadium in the United States. Boxing just isn't popular enough in the U.S. anymore to to get more than 80,000 fans in one venue like it did in the 1920s, when Jack Dempsey could sell out Soldier Field and the Polo Grounds.

But in Europe it's another matter. When David Haye fights Wladimir Klitschko on June 20 at the Veltins-Arena in Germany, it's expected to draw about 60,000 fans. And Hatton thinks that if he were to fight back home in England instead of Las Vegas, he could draw even more spectators than that.

As long as Floyd Mayweather is retired and Wladimir Klitschko and Vitali Klitschko obey their mother's command not to fight each other, there is exactly one boxing match that could possibly garner major mainstream media attention in 2009: Manny Pacquiao vs. Ricky Hatton.

Pacquiao vs. Hatton would be a wonderful fight matching two of the best boxers in the world, both of whom can draw in the United States and are huge stars in their own countries. Simply put, Pacquiao vs. Hatton is, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, too big to fail.

It's bad for boxing that WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko will defend his belt against Juan Carlos Gomez instead of David Haye. But it's worse that this kind of thing goes on all the time in this sport.

The two best heavyweights in the world are Vitali and his brother Wladimir Klitschko, who owns the IBF and WBO belts. Since the Klitschko brothers will never fight each other, boxing fans won't get to see a unified heavyweight title.

But the next-best thing would be for one of the Klitschkos to fight Haye, the former undisputed cruiserweight champ who is now a heavyweight. Klitschko vs. Haye is just the kind of heavyweight fight that boxing needs.

Wladimir Klitschko defended his WBO and IBF heavyweight titles in Germany today with a lopsided victory over the American Hasim Rahman, winning by TKO in the seventh round.

Klitschko dominated the early rounds, repeatedly landing hard jabs that Rahman just couldn't answer. In the third round Klitschko so thoroughly dominated that I scored it a 10-8 round even though Rahman never went down. Klitschko eventually wore Rahman down enough to knock him to the canvas in the sixth round -- a round in which Rahman didn't land a clean punch at all. Early in the seventh, Klitschko staggered Rahman, and the ref mercifully stopped it.

Klitschko and his brother Vitali are generally recognized as the two best heavyweights in the world, and although they'll never fight each other, I hope they'll start fighting better opposition than Rahman, who is well past his prime and appeared to be out of shape. Mismatches like this one don't do much to advance heavyweight boxing.

Klitschko improved his record to 52-3 and is now on a 10-fight winning streak. Rahman fell to 45-7-2 and is now 10-5-2 with one no contest since knocking out Lennox Lewis in 2001.

Welcome to the FanHouse live blog of this afternoon's heavyweight title fight between Wladimir Klitschko and Hasim Rahman, where we'll provide round-by-round updates of all of the action from the fight in Germany.

The fight begins around 5 p.m. Eastern and the live blog begins after the jump.

In an exciting, hard-hitting, sloppy eight-minute war, heavyweight boxer Chris Arreola beat Travis Walker with a TKO just 13 seconds into the third round. Walker whipped Arreola in the first round and knocked him down in the second, but Arreola showed a strong chin and a strong heart in coming back to knock Walker down twice in the second and again in the third.

Arreola is America's best heavyweight, but if he wants to be heavyweight champion of the world -- which would mean beating either Wladimir Klitschko or Vitali Klitschko -- it's time for him to devote himself to his conditioning. Arreola weighed in at a flabby 254 pounds for the Walker fight. To have a realistic chance of beating a Klitschko, he's going to need to be a chiseled 240.

Fortunately, Arreola seems to know that.

Returning to the ring for the first time in almost four years, Vitali Klitschko beat Samuel Peter today to become the WBC heavyweight champion.

Peter didn't answer the bell for the ninth round after Klitschko battered him in the eighth. Klitschko absolutely dominated the fight; two of the three judges said Klitschko had won all eight rounds and the other judge gave Klitschko seven of eight.

Klitschko's win makes it clear that there are two heavyweights who stand over all the others: Vitali and his younger brother, Wladimir Klitschko, who holds the IBF, IBO and WBO heavyweight belts. The Klitschko brothers have promised their mother they will not fight each other, meaning we will not have a heavyweight title unification fight any time soon.