By Sean McDaniel: The abdominal injury that IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (55-3, 49 KO’s) suffered today and the subsequent pulling out of his fight with little known opponent Dereck Chisora (14-0, 9 KO’s) may have saved Wladimir from a bad attendance for his fight at the SAP-Arena, Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. According to rumors circulating around, only 15,000 tickets were sold for the fight in a stadium that fits 60,000 fans.
Those are terrible numbers, needless to say. And while the injury may indeed be legit, if these numbers are true, the injury sure did help matters. That would have been a major disaster for Wladimir to fight in front of that small of a crowd. In hindsight, Wladimir may have misjudged the public’s interest in this fight, because Chisora is completely unknown outside of the UK, and Wladimir and his management may have been kidding themselves by selecting a fighter that has only fought 14 times during his young career and isn’t even popular in the UK, let alone world wide.
Those are terrible numbers, needless to say. And while the injury may indeed be legit, if these numbers are true, the injury sure did help matters. That would have been a major disaster for Wladimir to fight in front of that small of a crowd. In hindsight, Wladimir may have misjudged the public’s interest in this fight, because Chisora is completely unknown outside of the UK, and Wladimir and his management may have been kidding themselves by selecting a fighter that has only fought 14 times during his young career and isn’t even popular in the UK, let alone world wide.
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