04/19/24
December 12, 2005
Ukraine’s Klitschko to Enter Political Ring: Recently retired heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko said Saturday he would run in Ukraine’s parliamentary elections in March. Klitschko, who has been wooed by numerous political factions since his surprise retirement last month, is to top the party list of a newly formed bloc that includes a party headed by the country’s finance minister and the Pora youth movement, which helped organize last year’s Orange Revolution mass protests.
I love that quote. It rings so very, very true.
posted by Fade222 at 06:47 AM on December 12, 2005
All reminiscent of the chess boxing thread owlhouse posted a while back.
posted by JJ at 07:44 AM on December 12, 2005
Yes - not someone who I admired much as a fighter, but an obvious intellect. Good luck with his new career - that country is fucked.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 09:25 AM on December 12, 2005
Well, let's just hope it works out better than George Weah's foray into politics.
posted by afx237vi at 09:48 AM on December 12, 2005
Hey, George got beat by a Harvard educated female economist. Probably not a bad result for Liberia. Either way, the change in government was going to be an improvement on a military factional coup, which has tended to be their recent history.
posted by owlhouse at 07:53 PM on December 12, 2005
They have articles in Playboy? I must have missed them.
posted by Desert Dog at 08:00 PM on December 14, 2005
Klitschko is a smart guy. I read his interview in Playboy and he was very thoughtful and well-spoken; he is essentially a Rennaissance man well-versed in surprisingly broad range of topics. He and his brother Wladimir both hold PhDs, and both love to play chess. Vitali is also friends with Gary Kasparov (who has recently become involved in Russian politics, criticizing President Putin). This friendship perhaps encouraged his foray into the political arena, along with the recent reforms in the Ukraine.... You gotta love his quote comparing boxing to chess (from Wikipedia): "Chess is similar to boxing. You need to develop a strategy, and you need to think two or three steps ahead about what your opponent is doing. You have to be smart. But what's the difference between chess and boxing? In chess, nobody is an expert, but everybody plays. In boxing everybody is an expert, but nobody fights."