They’re fighters, and they’re in the fight of their lives

Wladimir Klitschko, who went 11 years without a defeat, amassing a raft of titles along the way, and his brother Vitali, the mayor of Kyiv and a former heavyweight champion himself, in the City Hall in Kyiv before Russian forces descended on the capital this week. Picture: Efrem Lukatsky

The two big men standing shoulder to shoulder in the photograph taken Sunday in the mayor’s office in beleaguered Kyiv, Ukraine, were instantly recognizable to most boxing fans. 

Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko, the sons of a Soviet major general, are both former heavyweight champions and whenever one was in the ring, the other was always helping from the corner.