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Ukraine’s Wladimir Klitschko basically tossed a no-hitter in Dusseldorf, Germany on Saturday, November 28th. However, the problem is he’s a professional boxer not a baseball pitcher. The former world champion threw his four world championships away when he refused to engage with fellow heavyweight Tyson Fury of England. Fury didn’t do much either and more or less won Klitschko’s WBA, IBF, WBO and IBO belts by default. Still, the real losers here were any fans who paid money to watch this abysmal excuse for a heavyweight title fight.

The 39-year-old Klitschko, also known as Dr. Steelhammer, went into the fight with 18 consecutive title defences to his name and hadn’t lost a contest since 2004. He had a record of 64-3 with 53 Kos while Fury was 24-0 with 18 Kos against journeymen opponents The 27-year-old Fury had a four-inch reach advantage over the former champ and lists himself at 6-feet-9-inches tall, while in reality he’s more like 6-foot-7. Klitschko, who stands 6-foot-6, should have just waded in and dealt with the weak-chinned challenger, but he actually appeared afraid to throw a punch in fear of getting hit in return and held his opponent whenever he got close to him.

This went on for 11 of the 12 rounds and when finally Klitschko realized he better start throwing some punches in the 12th round it was far too little too late. Therefore, he lost his heavyweight crowns via a unanimous decision by scores of 115-112, 115-112 and 116-111 despite Fury having a point deducted in the 11th round for hitting him on the back of the head. On paper, this is a huge upset, but it was a terrible, non-eventful fight inside the squared circle. When a young Cassius Clay stopped Sonny Liston, Leon Spinks outpointed Muhammad Ali and Buster Douglas knocked the hell out of Mike Tyson, they were all exciting and dramatic upsets. The Klitschko vs Fury farce was as dull as dishwater.

At least when Klitschko lost his first three fights by knockout over a decade ago they were actual contests in which he threw punches. This marked the first time he ever lost a decision and has nobody but himself to blame. He’s a far superior athlete and boxer compared to Fury, but just didn’t have it in him to throw punches and take chances even when Fury placed his hands behind his back. Between the two of them, a pathetic total of 138 punches were landed during 12 rounds and 36 minutes of ring time. Klitschko may have looked like he’d been in a fight, but the cuts on his face came as a result of head butts.

Klitschko threw just 231 punches and landed only 52 of them all night for a rate of 23 per cent. This means he landed 4.5 shots per round and let’s not forget that all but 18 of those were jabs. Fury threw 371 punches and landed 86 of them for the same percentage of 23. This means he landed slightly over seven punches per round. The performance these two put on makes the Manny Pacquiao vs Floyd Mayweather snoozefest back in May look like an absolute classic. The numbers are some of the worst ever as Klitschko landed a measly 18 out of 69 power shots for an average of 1.5 per round and he connected on a grand total of four body shots. Fury threw 202 power punches and landed just 48 for four per round.

The only person in the ring who earned a paycheque on this night was American referee Tony Weeks who spent an enormous amount of time and energy trying to stop the two giant heavyweights from holding and clinching each other. It’s hard to imagine a world heavyweight championship boxing match ever being this bad again….unless of course there’s a rematch.