Boxing's glamour division needs some serious help

	Wladimir Klitschko deserves credit for saying he wants to unify the titles, but then why is he next fighting journeyman Ray Austin? John Iacono/SI
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In 1992, Riddick Bowe decided to take a stand. Unhappy with the WBC's mandate that he fight No. 1 contender Lennox Lewis, Bowe decided that the belt was no longer worth the leather strap it came on. So in a glorious public-relations stunt, Bowe took the belt and unceremoniously dumped it into a London trash can.

"What do I want with garbage," said Bowe at the time. "If Lewis wants the belt, he has to get it out of the garbage. Then we will call him 'Garbage Picker.'"

I don't know if Bowe was afraid to fight Lewis. After all, it was Lewis who beat Bowe at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Or maybe he didn't want to risk the embarrassment of not only losing his belt, but also losing his first fight as a professional.

Certainly no one can say Lewis wasn't qualified, having just defeated Razor Ruddock for the right to fight for the belt. Maybe Bowe was ducking him. Or maybe -- just maybe -- Bowe wanted to fight on his own terms. That's something I wish the current king of the heavyweights would do.

First off, know that I have a problem with the heavyweight division. A big problem. The entire division is littered with mediocrity. Shannon Briggs, Oleg Maskaev, Nicolay Valuev -- none of them would have been considered elite in the '80s or '90s, much less the '70s, when fighters like Muhammad Ali or George Foreman would have beaten them down and taken their lunch money.

Briggs, the newly crowned WBO heavyweight champion, is the only fighter in that bunch to have taken on Lewis. The result was a five-round beating that saw Briggs hit the canvas three times. Valuev and his people (read: Don King) seem so determined for him to break Rocky Marciano's consecutive wins record that they will line him up against any Tom, Dick or Jameel that comes along. For the record, if Valuev does break that mark, his name should have a bigger asterisk next to it than Mark McGwire's.

What's worse, not one of these so-called champions appears willing to fight each other. This is where I take exception with Wladimir Klitschko, who I consider to be the most talented of the bunch. I know Klitschko wants to unify the titles; he told me as much last month after he dismantled the previously undefeated Calvin Brock. But when push came to shove, Klitschko folded, agreeing to step into the ring with journeyman Ray Austin in a fight that will shock me if it goes longer than five rounds.

Klitschko should have taken a page out of Bowe's book. Austin does nothing for his legacy. He is a vastly inferior opponent whose only use is to guarantee that Klitschko will be wearing a belt for another six months. If Wladimir wants to fight the best, he should toss the IBF belt in the same the same kind of receptable in which Bowe deposited his.

Titles are worthless if there isn't a true champion behind them. Ali, Foreman, Joe Frazier, even Mike Tyson, were without titles at different points of their careers and no one questioned whether they were the best. What should Klitschko do? He should tell the IBF that he has no interest in fighting Austin, who battled Sultan Ibragimov to an uninspired draw in July, and that it can have its belt back.

Klitschko should ask for, ... make that, demand a fight with Samuel Peter (who may lose his "mandatory" title shot to Wladimir's brother, Vitali, who announced he would be coming out of retirement). Peter is arguably the best heavyweight in the division not named Klitschko and there are only so many times he can knock around James Toney.

Think the networks care about titles? Belts don't attract viewers and they certainly don't encourage pay-per-view buys.

"Heavyweights identify with their belts more than any other division," says HBO senior vice president of programming Kery Davis, whose network holds a multi-fight contract with Wladimir. "They don't want to lose them."

Says Showtime general manager of sports programming Ken Hershman, "It's beyond frustrating. It's disappointing. The fighters and promoters need to be realistic [about the matches they make] and everyone will be better off."

The solution? A heavyweight tournament is one, but there are dissenting views on whether such an event is feasible. Davis says it's possible to see one in the next 12 months while Hershman is less optimistic, calling a heavyweight eliminator "hard to envision."

So what are we left with? At the moment, not much. Boxing fans salivating for a battle between true champions are left with excruciating matches like Briggs-Ibragimov, Klitschko-Austin and Valuev-McCline. The division needs to wake up because right now, nobody cares.