Klitschko's Jaw Hits the Floor

Writers often use the phrase "quite literally" when, of course, what they are about to describe is impossible to be literal, but in the case of Wladimir Klitschko on Thursday a "jaw-dropping" moment was almost, very nearly, and as close to damn it, as quite literally the case as it is possible to be. The jaw-dropping moment happened as he sat upstairs in a beautiful chalet hotel in the Austrian Tyrol region where his training camp was based for the David Haye world heavyweight fight due to be staged in Gelsenkirchen on June 20th. I was sitting no more than two feet away from him and had asked him about the hideous prospect of one day fighting his fellow heavyweight world boxing champ brother, Vitaly. Wladimir, who holds two out of the four main belts (his brother holds one other), was halfway to explaining how they would have to ask their mother when his manager, Bernd Boente, ran into the room, waving his arms, and announcing that the Haye camp had just made contact to announce that their man was injured and could not make the June 20 date. Klitschko had been training specifically for this fight for the past eight weeks, was motivated up to his eyeballs after the provocation and abuse hurled at him by Haye, and was very happy in the knowledge that there was just two weeks  to go. Now, mid-sentence, he was silenced and, as he finally admitted, utterly speechless. It was then that his large, solid chin seemed to slump downwards and his disappointment was there for all to see. A piece of advice to Haye: it might be worth leaving it a year if I were him, because there is one, very large, and very angry Ukrainian loitering in the Austrian Alps right now!