After New York, who now is the hope of the heavyweights?

The world heavyweight title roadshow moves on to the unlikely location of Cancun, Mexico, this weekend, but while the year started with hope of a new era of dominant heavyweights, so far it seems to have been an overwhelming disappointment. And don't expect much more this weekend.

The year didn't start well, when Ruslan Chagaev seeming rather lethargic in outpointing Matt Skelton in Dusseldorf. OK, it must be difficult to look good against Skelton, but the man who never stopped moving when he won the WBA title from Nikolay Valuev, was content to throw only a handful of punches per round.

After that Alexander Povetkin beat Eddie Chambers, but failed to show he was the future hope of the heavyweights, possibly because Chambers was so poor. In what I saw of the action, Valuev looked good beating Sergei Liakhovich and I would pick him to beat Chagaev in a rematch.

But the overwhelming disappointment was the dreadful heavyweight unification fight in New York between Wladimir Klitschko and Sultan Ibragimov.

I am still getting over the shock of reading in Boxing News this week that Klitschko's performance was in someway comparable with Joe Calzaghe's dominant performance against Jeff Lacy. Sorry, but no. The most glaring difference is that Klitschko barely threw any punches, Calzaghe landed more than 1,000. The only comparison was in the scorecards.

The fight left everyone feeling ripped off - the audience, TV viewers, journalists, TV executives. Everyone, it seems, except for Team Klitschko, who seemed to be of the opinion that the win was all that mattered. It was a big stage, a big chance, they may realise their mistake when more doors start closing to them in future. Who, in their right mind, would be interested in forking out large sums of money to see Klitschko's next defence? HBO put a lot of money and marketing effort into that fight and ended up with people complaining.

Despite the spin being put out by Don King, this weekend's action in Cancun, where Oleg Maskaev defends the WBC title against Samuel Peter, the interim champion, this bout is not going to solve anything. Neither would be anywhere close to an even money shot to beat Klitschko - Peter has already been beaten by him, a bout during which he lost every round he did not floor Wladimir in. What it will do is get a long overdue contest out of the way, so they can finally get on with the winner facing Klitschko's big brother, Vitali.

In the meantime Wladimir remains the best hope, albeit a rather poor one after New York, and he has to stay busy. He was inactive for seven months before the Ibragimov, not because of the injured hand he suffered beating Lamon Brewster in Cologne, but because HBO had run out of money to show him.

But if Klitschko is serious about being a heavyweight figurehead, he must not worry about the big bucks for now and instead needs to stay busy, even if HBO can't offer him his usual purse. And that means boxing again before the end of June. He has a couple of mandatory defences to get out of the way - the unthreatening Tony Thompson is the WBO's No 1 and I'm sure he would be happy to be given a shot straight away. The IBF mandatory, Povetkin, could then be fitted in around September or October, the winner of which would hopefully be ready for another unification against the WBA champion (Chagaev, Krasniqi or Valuev) in December or early in 2009. Meanwhile, brother Vitali would have had his shot and either lost or, more likely, won and retired again.

As it was a year ago, the best heavyweight fight out there is Wladimir Klitschko versus Valuev. That is the only match that can get the world talking and the sooner the road is smoothed to that bout the better. After the disgrace in New York, Klitschko owes the fans that much.