Don King offers Klitschko brothers 100 million dollars to fight each other

After the Klitschko brothers have won three of the four most important heavyweight belts, renowned US promoter Don King offered Vitali and Wladimir 100 million dollars for a fight with each other.

Photo: Don King offers Klitschko brothers 100 million dollars to fight each other

King made the announcement after Vitali Klitschko’s win over Samuel Peter, the Nigerian-born fighter, the former WBC heavyweight champion, Sport Express newspaper wrote.

However, taking into consideration the warm relations between the two Ukrainian brothers and their repeated rejections of any possibility to take the ring to fight each other, Don King’s offer does not seem to be serious at all. Experts say that King made the 100-million-dollar offer to the brothers to attract a little bit more attention to his own persona.

In addition, there is no point for Vitali and Wladimir to defeat each other in the super heavyweight division. The one who loses will have to start the way up from the very beginning.

Wladimir Vladimirovich Klitschko (born March 25, 1976) is a Ukrainian heavyweight boxer. Klitschko currently holds the IBF, WBO, and IBO world heavyweight titles. His elder brother, Vitali Klitschko, is the current WBC and former WBO heavyweight champion. The spelling Wladimir is a German spelling his manager adopted for him early in his career.

He was born in Semipalatinsk, Kazakh SSR (now Kazakhstan). Though a major celebrity in his former adopted home of Germany, in 2004 he moved with his older brother Vitali to Beverly Hills. Their father, Vladimir Rodionovich, was a Soviet Air Force Colonel. Their mother is Nadezhda Ulyanovna.

In the summer of 1996 Vladimir finished Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky Pedagogical Institute (Ukraine) and was accepted in the postgraduate study program of the Kyiv University. On January 18, 2001 in a conference hall of Kyiv University of physical science and sports, Vladimir presented his doctorate dissertation and was awarded a Ph.D. in Sports Science.

Vitali Vladimirovich Klitschko (born July 19, 1971) is a Ukrainian professional boxer and current WBC heavyweight champion. He vacated his WBC belt in 2005 due to retirement but announced his comeback in 2007. The WBC awarded Vitali a chance to regain his WBC belt and on October 11, 2008 in Germany he did so by beating Samuel Peter, when Peter retired on his stool at the end of the eighth round, while being behind 80-72 on the judges' scorecards. He has the highest knockout percentage (92%) of any heavyweight champion in overall fights.

Originally a professional kickboxer, Vitali won the super heavyweight championship at the first World Military Games in Italy in 1995. In that same year, he won the silver medal at the 1995 World Amateur Boxing Championships in Berlin Germany, where he was defeated by Russia's Alexei Lezin in the final. His amateur record was 195-15 with 80 knockouts.

He began his professional boxing career in 1996, winning his first twenty-four fights by either early knockout or technical-knockout (TKO). He and Wladimir signed with the German athlete-promotion company Universum. With both brothers holding Ph.D.s and being multilingual, their charismatic, refined and articulate personalities made for mainstream marketability when they moved to Germany and Universum. In time, they became national celebrities in their adopted home country. In his 25th pro fight, on June 26, 1999, Klitschko won the WBO heavyweight title from Herbie Hide of the United Kingdom by a 2nd round knockout.