First things first, Nikolai Valuev is a joke, a circus act, a sideshow barker's wet dream, he will never beat a true heavyweight champion, the man cannot throw a true punch, move laterally, or throw in combination. He incessantly throws arm punches, he doesn't seem to have the ability to throw a punch with conviction, or the ability to turn his hips through and throw a punch with his full force, nor can he seem to turn a punch over, these are the things you are taught to do before you even get into a ring, and he cannot do them. He uses his extreme size to overpower smaller weaker opponents, guys like Monte Barrett, who weighed in at 233 pounds, yet was out weighed by 105 lbs, Valuev outweighed his opponent by the average weight of a 10 year old. Sure that works on fringe contenders like the Barrett's of the world, but what happens when the "Russian Freak" has to face a real heavyweight champion, someone like Wladimir Klitschko, who at 6 foot 6 inches, and 240 pounds, is just six inches shorter and weights just 90 pounds less then Valuev. Yeah, that is still a very large disparity in height and weight, the difference is Klitschko can fight, he moves laterally, works behind a huge jab, and knows how to throw a true punch.

Don King knows a spectacle when he sees one, and Valuev is just that, a spectacle, who as long as he is able to stop guys with little or no chance of winning is going to continue to make King lots of money, but as soon as Valuev is forced to face one of the other three recognized heavyweight titlists he will be exposed for what he is, a very large human, with extremely limited boxing skills.

Secondly, I truly am a Diego Corrales fan, I love his heart, his desire, his ability to entertain, what happened last Friday when he couldn't make weight doesn't change my feelings for him in anyway. For those who don't know, or care, Corrales could not make the weight of 135 pounds for his title defense against Joel Casamayor, so in essence Corrales lost on the scales, he lost his world title and to a degree some of his reputation. After some negotiating with the Casamayor camp, they agreed to fight at the 147 pound weight limit, and according to the rules Casamayor was the only one who could walk out of the ring a champion, which was what happened, some fighter's just have another fighter's number. We have seen it before, most recently with Vernon Forrest and Shane Mosley, Ricardo Mayorga and Vernon Forrest, Antonio Tarver and Roy Jones Jr., there are just some fighters who you are not going to beat, and Casamayor is that to Diego Corrales. Corrales spoke of retiring after this lose, I hope he doesn't, but like they say, "if you're talking about it, you already have done it", good luck Chico in whatever you decide.

Well looks like this is a "rebuilding" year for my Buccaneers, starting out 0 and 4 does that to a team, kind of like in golf, when you bogey your first six holes and declare the rest of the round a practice round. One good thing to come out of this all is I think we have found our quarterback, Bruce Gradkowski looked poised and unfazed by his first NFL start ever, considering his last start was for Toledo of Ohio as a senior quarterback
just eight months ago.

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