Vitali Klitschko has survived in the ring against some tough opponents during his long boxing career, but the 40-year-old Ukrainian heavyweight champion might finally have met his match Wednesday.
Klitschko the WBC champ and older brother of Wladimir Klitschko, who holds all the other heavyweight belts and who fights on Saturday in Switzerland, got sprayed with tear gas during a protest in which he was involved in his hometown of Kyiv, Ukraine.
Klitschko, who is running for mayor of Kyiv, and other Ukrainians were protesting a Russian language bill passed by parliament that makes Russian, not Ukrainian, the official language in some formal settings in the country that was once a Soviet republic.
