| 22 October 2011
If you aren't a regular reader of Bill Simmons' sports-meets-pop culture ESPN-spinoff Grantland - and if you're a boxing fan, you should be, because it's where the excellent Eric Raskin, former managing editor of The Ring magazine, currently does his thing- you may not have seen Davy Rothbart's recent interview with Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko. Go ahead and read it. We'll wait...
It's a pretty wide-ranging interview despite being relatively brief. The Klitschko brothers are so established as boxing heroes in the Western world (Germany in particular) that it's easy to forget that they grew up in Ukraine and exactly what that entailed. It's also incredibly awesome that along with Coca-Cola and action movies, the Klitschkos were swayed from their anti-American upbringing by the power of cheese.
And future heavyweights beware: There could be a next generation of Klitschkos on the way. Vitali says that his odlest son, Egor Daniel, has inquired about taking up the sport. He's got a younger brother too, so it's entirely conceivable that the Klitschko Brothers v. 2.0 could reign over the heavyweight division down the road.
The difference would be that Vitali's boys are American citizens, born here in the States. Maybe all we have to do to experience a U.S. renaissance in the heavyweight division is wait 15-20 years...
