Through the years, IBF heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko and his brother, former WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko, and have become known as good people with a social conscience.

Wladimir devotes considerable time to raising public awareness and funds for UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization). “My understanding of life changes as I see things with my own eyes,” he said recently. “The world is getting smaller. We have to act differently and change our relationships to each other.”

Vitali went even further, actively campaigning as a reform candidate for election as mayor of Kiev last year.

That bit of history is relevant now because Team Klitschko is currently engaged in maneuvering that, if successful, will tarnish the Klitschko reputation forever.

On September 2, 2006, Samuel Peter of Nigeria defeated James Toney in a bout that was supposed to determine the mandatory challenger for WBC heavyweight beltholder Oleg Maskaev. But the powers-that-be at the WBC ruled that the decision in Peter’s favor was “controversial” and ordered the two men to fight a rematch. They did, with Peter winning convincingly on January 6.

Meanwhile, the Klitschko camp has been trying to arrange a unification bout between Maskaev and one of the brothers. Initially, it wanted Peter to accept step-aside money to allow Wladimir to fight Maskaev. Peter refused. Now Team Klitschko is urging the WBC to allow Vitali to come out of retirement and jump over Peter as the mandatory challenger by virtue of the Ukrainian being a “champion emeritus.”

Asked to comment on the matter last month, WBC president Jose Sulaiman said: “About Vitali, because of our rules, there are now two mandatory challengers, and the WBC will have to decide which mandatory comes first. We will not take away Samuel Peter’s mandatory, but we might postpone it. If you believe that is unfair, you are mistaken.”

Then, on February 8, there was a meeting in New York attended by Sulaiman, Klitschko adviser Shelly Finkel, Tom Loeffler (Klitschko’s promoter of record), Dennis Rappaport (Maskaev’s promoter), Ivaylo Gotzev (Peter’s manager), Don King and Dino Duva (Peter’s co-promoters), DKP vice president Bob Goodman, and enough lawyers to create a feeding frenzy of monstrous proportions.

The WBC, Klitschko, and Maskaev expressed the view that Klitschko-Maskaev should take place sooner rather than later. According to several meeting participants, Finkel offered $2.5 million in step-aside money to the Peter camp. In addition, if Peter steps aside under the terms of the offer, he would be the mandatory challenger for the winner of Maskaev-Klitschko and given a 50–50 purse split. If the winner of Klitschko-Maskaev failed to fight Peter within 120 days, he would be stripped of his title.

The Peter camp is uncertain about its next step. He has earned his mandatory title shot, and his attorneys are confident that they would be awarded a significant monetary recovery if the matter were resolved in its entirety in state or federal court. Their problem is that Peter signed a contract with the WBC before his two “mandatory eliminator” bouts against Toney that is believed to provide for compulsory arbitration in lieu of court action should a dispute arise. Thus, if the WBC orders that the matter be arbitrated, the Peter camp would first have to go to court in an effort to void the arbitration clause.

Also, the issue of how any stepaside money would be split among Peter, Duva, and King has yet to be resolved. And there are rumors that Maskaev might not be ready to fight until June because of elbow surgery, as well as questions regarding whether Vitali is physically fit to fight twice within the span of 120 days.

If Peter steps aside, one big loser will be Don King, who is fond of saying that he has been the lead dog in boxing for more than three decades and that, “Unless you’re the lead dog, the scenery never changes.” The WBC-Klitschko-Maskaev-Peter confrontation is a direct test of King’s influence and power. If his fighter is pushed aside, a lot of vultures will be circling.

Meanwhile, the biggest loser in all of this is the public. Boxing fans bought tickets and turned on the television, not once but twice, to watch Peter versus Toney in the belief that the winner would be the mandatory challenger for Maskaev’s WBC crown. Some of those viewers, particularly in Nigeria, are ardent Samuel Peter fans.

Suppose, at commissioner Roger Goodell’s urging, the National Football League announced to the world last month, “We know that the Indianapolis Colts beat the New England Patriots in the AFC title game, but the Colts have accepted step-aside money to let the Patriots play the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl.”

That’s what the WBC, in conjunction with the Klitschko and Maskaev camps, is now trying to lay on the public. Sleazy maneuvering like this is a primary reason why millions of sports fans have lost interest in boxing.

thauser@rcn.com