FanHouse Wbo

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.

Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto have tentatively agreed to fight in Las Vegas on November 14, giving the world's best pound-for-pound boxer a very challenging fight against a highly ranked opponent -- and ensuring that we won't see Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather any time soon.

Miguel Cotto defeated Joshua Clottey by split decision Saturday night in a wild WBO welterweight title fight that left the fans in attendance at Madison Square Garden standing and cheering, and gave Cotto what may have been the biggest win of his boxing career.

Cotto knocked Clottey down with a stiff jab in the first round, and he appeared to be the better fighter in the early going. But a key turning point came when Cotto was cut over the left eye by an accidental head butt in the third round. After that, the fight turned into less of a boxing match and more of a slugfest, and Cotto often appeared to be frustrated by the blood in his eye.

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.

HBO boxing announcer Jim Lampley has a real gift for brevity: He can tell you everything you need to know about a boxer in just a couple of sentences. And I think a comment he made before Saturday night's Chad Dawson-Antonio Tarver fight demonstrates that beautifully.

"Zsolt Erdei has held a title belt for quite some time," Lampley said. "At 30-0, he is probably the least respected, most ignored unbeaten longtime title holder in the history of the sport."

Boxing has a hard time attracting new fans for many reasons. Two of the biggest are that no one can keep the weight classes straight and no one can keep the champions straight. Below is my attempt to fix that, listing the legitimate champions in each of the eight traditional weight classes.

If there is a lesson to learn from the life of Juan Diaz, the former unified lightweight champion of the world, current college senior and boxer with a motor so powerful NASCAR would stick a restrictor plate on it, it is simply this.

Don't mess with the fat kid.

In an amount of time smaller than any second could be split, and faster than even he can bob, weave and hurl a counterpunch, Juan Manuel Marquez leaps to an answer with enough enthusiasm you'd be forgiven for thinking someone had just asked a kid to the prom.