Klitschko Brothers 2009

It was a great year for the Klitschko brothers in 2009. With both brothers champions, they defended their titles a total of 4 times. Vitali started the year off defending his WBC belt with a great TKO victory over previous unbeaten cruiserweight turned top ranked heavyweight Juan Carlos Gomez on March 21st, while Wladimir defended his WBO, IBF, and IBO belts against the WBA champion in recess Ruslan Chagaev on June 20th by 9th round TKO.

It should be noted that Wladimir was supposed to fight former cruiserweight champion David Haye, but Haye cited a injury which took him out of the match-up. Rather than make fans wait for a undetermined amount of time(Haye and his camp kept changing the dates to postpone), Wladimir decided to go with a fight with someone, and that's how the fight with Ruslan materialized. Unfortunately, even though Ruslan was technically the "champion in recess" Wladimir did not fight for the WBA belt, and Valuev remained champion although Ruslan had beaten him already. The reason Valuev was champion is because Chagaev was injured during the maximum time allowed to defend his belts to a mandatory challenger and Valuev ended up fighting Ruiz for the belt and won leaving Chagaev "champion in recess"

Due to an injury Wladimir actually occurred before fighting June 20th and which escalated during his fight, he was unable to compete for the rest of 2009(There was a possibilty to fight at the very end of the year, but their were no open slots to show a fight of his on HBO so he and his team opted to wait till the next year). However, his brother Vitali continued the domination by defeating the #1 American heavyweight at the time Chris Arreola on September 26th and defeating him by 10th round TKO.

Vitali fought one more time by the end of the year on December 12th against the undefeated and boastful Kevin Johnson in which he easily got a 12 round decision victory. Johnson predicted to KO Klitschko and ended up cowering the entire fight and strangely enough trash talking at the same time. Who knows what his strategy was(most likely to just survive) but it certainly wasn't to win.

So, overall a great year for the Klitschko's even though it would have been nice for Wladimir to fight another time. Not entirely his fault though, he would have fought around March but was backed up by Haye's promises and ended up getting a injury after he fought Chagaev. Look for Wladimir to fight "Fast" Eddie Chambers this year. According to boxrec.com the fight is already scheduled for March 20th but I haven't heard an actual declaration of the fight being a go as of yet. Also, look for Vitali to make a voluntary defense potentially against the former WBA champ Nicolai Valuev and possibly another fight later in the year with David Haye after the new WBA champion fights his mandatory John Ruiz.....

Here's a good video showing a recap of the Klitschko fights in 2009(in German). Enjoy!