WLADIMIR KLITSCHKO KO11 TONY THOMPSON

It was a tough, gruelling slog but Wladimir Klitschko came through it, wearing down and finally overpowering a stubborn but ultimately outclassed Tony Thompson in Saturday’s heavyweight title fight.

For the first five rounds Thompson seemed to be in with a chance as he stood up to Klitschko’s right hands and pegged away with body punches, but from the sixth it was as if the champion from Ukraine began to gather himself physically and psychologically.

With each man cut over the right eye after a second-round clash of heads, it was Klitschko’s big-fight seasoning as much as anything that allowed him to pull completely away from Thompson.

I thought in the ninth that Klitschko was heading for a widely scored, unanimous decision win, but Thompson began to wilt visibly in the 10th and the fall to the canvas with Klitschko landing on top of him didn’t do the challenger from DC much good. Coming out for the 11th, Thompson clearly did not have a lot left and Klitschko sensed this and went after him to close the show — “smelled blood” as HBO analyst Lennox Lewis put it.

There were things to like and things not to like in Klitschko’s latest win.

What not to like? In the early rounds, Klitschko seemed to be in danger of tiring, with that curious, almost-hyperventilating look that he takes on when he feels pressure. His right hand seemed to be placed rather than fired with full force. Also, Klitschko seemed too eager to fall into clinches in, dare I say it, an almost amateurish way, as if he was in doubt what to do and decided to grab a breather.

Once Klitschko settled down, though, he started to look like the world’s dominant heavyweight. The change seemed to come over him in the sixth round. He had been winning the rounds, but now he was starting to bully Thompson and beat him up.

In a tiring sort of fight, and cut over the eye, Klitschko showed that he can grind out a physical type of win as well outbox an opponent from a safe distance. He showed mental and physical toughness. His hitting seemed to be heavier in the second half of the fight, and although Thompson did a good job of blocking punches on his high, southpaw guard it seemed that the weight of the blows was starting to beat him down.

If a heavyweight starts to weaken against Klitschko it is usually the beginning of the end, and I think that Thompson did well to get as far as the 11th round.

Klitschko did what heavyweight champions are supposed to do when the challenger is in trouble — he pressed in on him and he knocked him out. When Thompson went down from the last, big right hand he just seemed to lose all his muscle tone so that he flopped limply onto the ring canvas in the rag-doll way that indicates a fighter has nothing left to give. Even so, he made an effort to beat the count of referee Joe Cortez, who was competent and low-key — even forgoing the "fair but firm" line in his pre-fight instructions.

It was, then, an impressive finish by Klitschko, if perhaps slightly longer in coming than should have been the case when you consider that Thompson was showing signs of succumbing as early as the seventh.

Still, all was well that ended well. Klitschko was coming on so strongly at the end of the fight that it might have done much to dispel doubts about his stamina, he outfought and outlasted his challenger, and he closed out the fight in spectacular style to make this, overall, what I would classify as a positive performance. We know he can win by boxing; on Saturday he showed he can also win by fighting.