FanHouse Ruslan Chagaev

Challenger David Haye did a lot of trash talking before Saturday night's clash with WBA champion Nikolai Valuev. In the end, the smaller man backed up his words.

There are reports across the globe that we have our first real heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis retired in 2003.

Wladimir Klitschko defeated some guy named Ruslan Chagaev Saturday in Germany to retain his IBF and WBO titles. Klitschko also won The Ring magazine belt for recognition as the best heavyweight in the game.

Big deal.

Wladimir Klitschko beat Ruslan Chagaev to win the heavyweight championship of the world in a dominant if slow-paced performance on Saturday before an estimated 60,000 fans at Veltins Arena in Germany.

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'm beginning to wonder what is more likely to happen during my lifetime - the discovery of life on Mars or a unified heavyweight title. I'd love to say the latter because I think it would be good for a sport I enjoy but year after year goes by without any movement toward that end. A big part of the problem has been Ruslan Chagaev's immune system.

The current WBA titleist was scheduled to fight Nikolai Valuev on May 31. He beat Valuev by majority decision in April 2007 to win the belt but the rematch has been put on hold because Chagaev is suffering from a viral infection. It was hoped, in these quarters at least, that the winner would then meet Wladimir Klitschko or Samuel Peter to make the title picture clearer.

It's the second time Chagaev's health has forestalled such clarity. He was supposed to fight Sultan Ibragimov last year to unite two links in the alphabet soup but Chagaev contracted hepatitis B. Ibragimov fought Evander Holyfield instead before losing his belt to Klitschko. Ideally Klitschko would face Peter but he's scheduled a match with also-ran Tony Thompson instead so that his brother Vitali can pursue a fight with Peter.

A Vitali win would make unification nigh on impossible since the Klitschkos refuse to fight one another. Between that, Chagaev's health and the general inanity of boxing's governing bodies I'm brushing up on my Martian.

We're one step closer to having a unified heavyweight boxing champion after Wladimir Klitschko defeated Sultan Ibragimov to add the WBO title belt to the IBF title belt he already owned.

And we'll get another step closer if, as expected, Klitschko next fights WBA champion Ruslan Chagaev.

But what about the fourth and final heavyweight title belt, from the WBC? That one is currently owned by Oleg Maskaev, who fights Samuel Peter in two weeks. If a Klitschko-Chagaev fight could be arranged quickly, and the winner of that one takes on the Maskaev-Peter winner, we'd have a unified title.

But it's not that simple, because there's a wild card in all of this: Klitschko's older brother, Vitali. Although Vitali hasn't fought in more than three years, there's talk that he'll make his return to the ring some time this year and take on the Maskaev-Peter winner.

That means we could be looking at Vitali Klitschko owning one heavyweight title belt and Wladimir Klitschko owning the other three. And that would set up a brother vs. brother fight for the unified heavyweight title, a fight that would be the biggest thing heavyweight boxing has seen since Lennox Lewis fought Mike Tyson.

Except that the fight will never happen. Both Klitschko brothers say they'll honor a vow to their mother not to fight each other. That means we boxing fans may be robbed of the fight we all really want to see. Thanks a lot, Mrs. Klitschko.