Alex Leapai Reckons Wladimir Klitschko Is Full Of Fear

  THE heavyweight champion of the world took a deep breath, looked me dead in the eye and told me that he was in no way haunted by the brutal knockout he once suffered against a man of identical size to Australia’s Alex Leapai.

But the brief flinch in the face of Wladimir Klitschko betrayed the fact that he knows Leapai has the potential to cause a similar upset when they clash for the world title in Oberhausen on Sunday morning.
Klitschko, 38, has been unbeaten for 10 years but can never escape the fact that in 2004 he suffered a crushing fifth round stoppage against American underdog Lamon Brewster, like Leapai a 183cm slugger with heavy hands. It was the third and final defeat of a professional record that has seen Klitschko win 61 of 64 fights, 51 by knockout, after his Olympic super-heavyweight gold medal in 1996.
On Wednesday at a media conference in Dusseldorf, I asked one of the greatest heavyweights of all time whether he had real problems against heavy punchers who were much shorter than him.
“I hope Alex is studying that Brewster fight,’’ Klitschko said. “It will give him confidence. I also suffered losses to Ross Puritty and Corrie Sanders.
“But Alex will see I learned a lot from those defeats and I have been working very hard for my tough exam this week.’’
Leapai’s trainer Noel Thornberry praised Klitschko on Wednesday as “the dominant fighter of his time, just like Muhammad Ali was in the 1960s and ‘70s and Mike Tyson in the ‘80s.’’
He said it was a great opportunity for Leapai as he had the power to replicate Brewster’s stunning KO of a decade ago.
The 198cm Klitschko and his 201cm brother Vitali are the sons of a former Soviet air force general. Both have doctorates in sports science.
They have been leading figures in combat sports since the early 1990s when Vitali, now a prominent Ukrainian politician, won world mixed martial arts titles. A ban for using steroids saw him miss the Atlanta Olympics boxing competition but Wladimir went in his place and came home with the gold medal.