With all due respect to the media outlets hoping for the "fight of the decade," and with much sympathy for the dwindling number of boxing fans who were eager for something to get excited about, last Saturday's heavyweight bout between Vladimir Klitschko and Sultan Ibragimov kinda sucked. As with most heavily-touted fights these days, it ultimately said more about the sorry state of boxing than about the particular match itself.

The fight in New York was a dull affair, so much so that the 14,011 strong crowd booed in several rounds. Klitschko went in a heavy favorite, with a substantial height and reach advantage, and he pursued a mundane game plan of careful jabs for most of the fight. As many noted the next day, Klitschko did what he had to do, and not much more. He won by a unanimous decision of the judges.

It speaks well for Klitschko professionalism, perhaps, but not for what people are looking for, and that is perhaps the irony of it all. After the days of psychopathic heavyweights like Mike Tyson, the mild-mannered Ukrainian fighter seems like a refreshing change. He has a Ph.D from Kiev University (granted, in "sports science"), enjoys chess, and doesn't make a fool of himself when he speaks. He now holds the crown of the International Boxing Federation, and picked up from Ibragimov the World Boxing Organization belt.

Now here's where the problems start. He is also interested in picking up and unifying the remaining heavyweight titles: the World Boxing Association title held by Ruslan Chagayev of Uzbekistan and the World Boxing Council belt held by Russian Oleg Maskayev who lives in the United States. It'll take some doing to cut through that particular alphabet soup. It's a remarkable challenge - not just because he'll have to beat the top challengers but navigate an opaque and nonsensical system of contractual obligations, ranking issues, and other mumbo-jumbo to do it. It is a triumph or organization skill as well as fighting.

Incidentally, all the heavyweight titles at the moment are held by fighters from the former Soviet Union. It would appear Russian boxers are doing to their sport what Russian women are doing to tennis. Except in this case, it seems to sadly reflect more pathology than point of pride.

Fighting suffers from a severe imbalance in the ratio of hype to reality. Consider folks like Don King, whose clownish behavior has made him a pop cultural icon, but whose simple greed and hucksterism has damaged the sport. Thus, when fight fans poured into Madison Square Garden last weekend, they probably had a hunch the fight wouldn't be as close as a "fight of the decade" would promise, but they expected more, for certain.

While we're on the subject, just consider the venue. Madison Square Garden, the self-styled "World's Most Famous Arena" was indeed once the "Mecca" of the fight world. That was another building, 17 blocks away, not the current soulless sad-sack donut that was built in 1968 and features the same overpriced snacks you'd find in Phoenix or Atlanta.

The state of boxing is all the more amazing when you remember from how high it fell. In midcentury America, the mainstream professional sports were baseball, horse-racing, and boxing. Each card was an event, cities around the country were filled with eager young men - often immigrants or minorities - eager to prove they were the next big contender.

But all that is drying up. Part of it is the unrelenting modern juggernauts of the big-time spectator sports, in which megabucks and vast television audiences have shoved the "sweet science" into an ever-shrinking corner. And while there are pockets of hardcore fans around the world - especially here in Russia - and there are signs of life in some of boxing's other less marquee divisions (consider the real excitement about last December's welterweight bout between Floyd Mayweather and Ricky Hatton), it remains uncertain that mainstream boxing can get off the canvas. Especially as it faces stiff competition from emerging "ultimate fighting" leagues that appeal to man's basic urge to watch two guys, basically, beat each other up for money.

The historically-minded realize what a shame that would be. Just consider the myths and legends that heavyweight boxing has created. Think about the literary star-power that has weighed in on the sport: A.J. Liebling, Tom Wolfe, George Plimpton, Murray Kempton, Norman Mailer, Pete Hamill, Hunter S. Thompson, Gay Talese, David Remnick: these are the writers who have waxed poetic about Muhammad Ali alone.

You only have to read their work, or Hemingway, or Jack London, to realize there is something very primally interesting about boxing. That is durable, and suggests without a doubt that the sport will always have a place. Especially if Klitschko can bring some order to the heavyweight division.