Warren comment about Wlad Povetkin

[Stocks]

"Meanwhile Vitali's little brother, WBO/IBF champion Wladimir, won't be fighting Russia's Alexander Povetkin in the Ukraine.

The Klitschkos explained that they don't want the fight hi-jacked by the far right, who would make a big deal out of a Ukrainian fighting a Russian."

anyone know if this is true?

[Poncey]

It's in Germany on Dec 13th?

[dbf]

This was reported in this weeks Boxing News.

[Carbo]

"Meanwhile Vitali's little brother, WBO/IBF champion Wladimir, won't be fighting Russia's Alexander Povetkin in the Ukraine.

The Klitschkos explained that they don't want the fight hi-jacked by the far right, who would make a big deal out of a Ukrainian fighting a Russian."

anyone know if this is true?

I live in Russia, and I really don't see it as a problem. Russians and Ukranians get along great, on a person to person level. They have a shared language, culture and history, many have members of their family living on the other side of the border and really they don't hate eachother the way it's made out in the Western press. It's all very similar to the Scotland -- England thing, in my view.

There is, obviously a marked difference between the East of the country (predominantly Russian speaking, pro-Russian) and the west (mostly Ukranian speaking and a bit more anti-Russian, I would guess), which are seperated by the Dneiper.

I'm not sure what the problem is. From what I can gather the Klitschkos want the fight moved from Kiev, which would indicate there is a problem there, and as I don't live in Kiev, I don't know; but I would suggest that boxing matches get sold on the nationalistic angle all the time, and really don't see it as being a big issue.

Of course, both Klitschkos speak Russian and not Ukrainian (although I beleive Vitaliy learned for his second run at mayor of Kiev after being battered for his crappy Ukrainian language skills in his first run), so perhaps they've got problems with certain nationalist groups in Ukraine.