Well, the Peter uprising that I hoped for certainly never materialized, as the taller, more skilled Vitali Klitschko pounded Peter into submission with a constant barrage of filthy right hands that bloodied the Nigerian’s face. Peter quit on his stool after eight rounds, for the second defeat of his career.

Heading into the bout, there were two main questions:

1. After four years of inactivity and at 37 years of age, what did Vitali Klitschko have left?

2. Coming off his impressive win over Oleg Maskaev, would Peter continue to show the improvements in technique and aggression that could have made this fight competitive for him?

Over eight rounds, it became clear that the answers were 1. quite a bit and 2. absolutely not. From the opening bell, Peter looked tentative and lethargic. Incredibly, he failed to work his way inside (the referree didn’t have to break the two fighters at all until the last round), didn’t use his jab to set up combinations, and kept himself, and most importantly, his face, right in the range of Klitschko’s long, powerful arms. If that’s all he was going to do, Peter should have thrown in the towel at the weigh-in. Under those conditions, he simply had absolutely no chance of winning, even if Klitschko had been a reduced, sloppy fighter.

But Klitschko wasn’t. Amazingly for a fighter who had not stepped into the ring for almost four years, Klitschko was supremely accurate with all his punches, and overall looked to be in excellent condition. He kept his back very straight, taking full advantage of his 6 foot, 7 1/2 inch frame. Every punch he threw was delivered with power and conviction. There is nothing to critique about his performance. But remember: Peter’s pathetic showing meant that he also was not hit with one significant punch the entire fight. A better opponent might have left us with a very different impression of his abilities at this stage in his career. Unfortunately for boxing, the dreadful heavyweight division only really has one fighter who is clearly better than Peter: Vitali’s younger brother Wladimir, and those two will never fight each other in the ring. In that sense, with Vitali Klitschko’s win tonight, the entire division has gone into something of a deep freeze, and will remain there until one of the two Klitschko brothers is defeated.