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An interesting meeting of brothers took place after the weigh-in: Steve Upsher Chambers started chatting with Vitali Klitschko.

Steve, a 21-1 welterweight, isn't Eddie's blood brother; they moved from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia together to pursue boxing careers, and Steve became part of the Chambers family, even taking the last name. Steve asked Vitali for an opinion of Brother Eddie. Vitali said size really isn't everything and Chambers should not be underestimated. The elder Klitschko said he'd warned Wladimir as much.

No surprises on the scale: Wladimir Klitschko weighed 245 pounds (111 kilos); Eddie Chambers, 209 pounds (95 kilos).

The weigh-in, as an event, was a midtown madhouse. It took place on the third floor of Karstadt, a busy department store in Dusseldorf, on a temporary stage built between the pillow department and the picture frame selection.

There was a mob inside the store and out, and lots of scrumming whenever Wladimir came within range of view. Michael Buffer announced the brief proceedings.

After Chambers weighed in, Klitschko joked that Chambers was a mere cruiserweight. Then Wlad made a show of personally moving the metal slider on the scale several inches before he stepped on.

The staredown was uneventful, though, and all parties retreated behind closed doors for the prefight rules meeting.

Chambers' manager/trainer Rob Murray said they hoped to emerge from the meeting knowing Klitschko won't be able to hold and lean on Chambers too much. We'll see.

The ref for Wladimir Klitschko-Eddie Chambers will be Genaro Rodriguez.

Rodriguez ran traffic for Chambers' last fight, a 12-round decision over Alexander Dimitrenko, so to the extent that Dimintenko was a similar-styled stand-in for Klitschko, that's good news for Team Chambers. The judges will be from America, Germany and England.

Eddie Chambers is planning to enter the ring to fight Wladimir Klitschko in Dusseldorf on Saturday wearing a special robe. It'll be a long, old-school robe, but without Chambers' name on the back. Instead, it'll have the names of great American heavyweights including Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, Rocky Marciano and Jack Johnson.

Not a bad source of inspiration -- those guys were known to occasionally go overseas and punch out the opposition.

Eddie Chambers has a rep for being too defensive, too cautious. That's how he lost a fight he was winning against Alexander Povetkin in Berlin in January 2008.

During a media call earlier this week, I asked Chambers and his trainer Rob Murray if they watched the Manny Pacquiao-Joshua Clottey fight, which seemed to be a perfect blueprint for how a great defensive fighter can strap on the protective earmuffs and not beat a big puncher. Other reporters seemed concerned, too, that Chambers might go into similar lockdown mode, blocking Wladimir Klitschko's punches without returning enough fire.

"Me and Eddie talked about that," Murray said. "We saw part of that fight. Everybody that you see fight that [defensive] style is landlocked. You're not going to be able to punch with any significance with your hands up in front of your face like that. That's a situation we learned in the Povetkin fight. If you've seen any of Eddie's fight after the Povetkin fight, you notice that he's not doing that anymore."

Chambers promised to find an offensive gear.

"I'm gonna have to find a way to kick the door in," he said. "Obviously, there are times I'm going to pick up the aggression, and other times I'm going to have to wait. This is a chess match, not checkers. You have to be patient or else you might get checkmated."

Translation: checkmated, against a Klitschko at least, means being punched really, really hard.

This week's Big D city hosting a big fight is Dusseldorf -- the duece! What a beautiful, modern city on the Rhein River. In the taxi over to the hotel, with dawn breaking, we passed a billboard for "Duell Am Rhein." That's what they're calling the Wladimir Klitschko-Eddie Chambers fight. Then we passed some super-mod Frank Gehry buildings that looked all crumbled, kind of like Klitschko's opponents after a few rounds.

At the hotel, the check-in guy at the desk told me what my name means in German: "stone mountain." Awesome -- I have a new nickname!

Check back for weigh-in updates later in the day.

Fight week for Saturday's Wladimir Klitschko-Eddie Chambers title bout has been pretty friendly to the Dusseldorf Chamber of Commerce ... if there is one.

Monday's news conference was at a hot local nightclub called Ufer 8.

In an open workout Wednesday, the fighters shadowboxed -- separately -- at a Mercedes dealership. And the weigh-in Friday afternoon is at a downtown department store called Karstadt. I'll arrive at Flughafen Dusseldorf International (got to love that word for airport) Friday morning after a red-eye Lufthansa flight, just in time to see how much the big guys weigh, and maybe shop for some linens.

I'll post updates here Friday, then on Saturday it'll be live reports from Esprit Arena. Yep, that's Esprit, the casual clothing company.

It is always especially difficult for a fighter to come back and avenge a devastating defeat; there can be psychological scars.

It can be done, though, and on "Friday Night Fights" Sechew Powell will be attempting to turn the tables on Deandre Latimore in their junior middleweight title elimination bout.

Boxing really can be more mental than physical, especially in situations such as this. It is very rare for a boxer to accept that he lost to a better man. There always has to be a reason for the setback. If the fighter can, in his own mind, find that reason, he can conquer the demons of doubt.

Ring history contains famous examples of fighters who came back to win against opponents who had knocked them out. Floyd Patterson, for instance, was battered to the canvas seven times by Ingemar Johansson but knocked out the Swedish heavyweight in the rematch.

Patterson believed that he had simply been careless and complacent in the first fight. It was a different Patterson in the rematch, sharper, more alert, prepared to fight the fight of his life. Johansson, meanwhile, seemed to think all he had to do was land the big right hand again. "This is easily the most gratifying moment of my life," Patterson told reporters afterwards.

Featherweight great Willie Pep also achieved an historic revenge victory when he outpointed Sandy Saddler in their classic rematch in 1949. Saddler had knocked out Pep in the fourth round four months earlier. Ringside reports suggested that Pep wasn't himself in the first fight with Saddler. He had "little spring in his legs, no sharpness to his punching," the New York Times reported, yet in the rematch Pep scored one of the greatest wins in boxing history.

The great Joe Louis crushed Max Schmeling in their rematch. Old-time middleweight champ Stanley Ketchel beat up Billy Papke three months after Papke had stopped him. Junior middle champ Terry Norris, knocked out by Simon Brown in a big upset, easily won the return bout. Chiquita Gonzalez, knocked out by Michael Carbajal in a junior flyweight classic, won their two subsequent bouts.

If, then, a defeated fighter goes into a rematch genuinely believing that what happened in the first fight can't happen again, a reversal of fortune can be achieved. It is all in the mind; on Friday we will find out if Sechew Powell's mind is in the right place.

Well, that was fun. Nothing quite like being in the open air. Plenty of cheers from the crowd once Michael Buffer took the mike and the TV fighters weighed in. Even Antonio Margarito was mostly cheered when introduced to the crowd. The Joshua Clottey camp must have been concerned about weight because it had an unofficial pre-weigh-in beforehand with the team crowding around and blocking view of the scale.

But there was triumphant punching of the air when Clottey's camp realized he was on the button.

Huge cheers from the crowd for Pacquiao, and "Man-ny" chants. It'll be Little Manila in Texas on Saturday night.

And now, it's all over except the fighting. Join us for live coverage of fight night at 9 p.m. ET.

Like all good weigh-ins, this one has a DJ, a few fans holding a small banner reading "Irish Supporting Pacquiao," some quite cold-looking Tecate girls and a moderately enthusiastic crowd. I don't know whether it's the open-air venue or what, but it feels pretty low-key so far. We'll see how things change when the main event weighs in. (Judging by the cheers for every Filipino, it's a very pro-Manny crowd).

Our busload o' journalists has arrived at Cowboys Stadium. After the obligatory pause to "ooh" and "ahh" at the video screen, we're taking our positions in the plaza outside. It's a cool Texas evening, and a good crowd is gathering already.

I'm about to board the shuttle to the stadium for the weigh-in. Alas, as is so often the case during fight week, my experience of Dallas is the fight hotel, the stadium and rush-hour traffic between the two.

The fight hotel and stadium are great; rush hour, not so much. You do not want to be stuck in traffic at 5 p.m. with Bert Sugar. Just trust me on this.

I've written quite a bit about Freddie Roach, who's definitely the A-side in the battle of the trainers.

But what about Lenny De Jesus, the little-known substitute taking the reins of Joshua Clottey's corner?

"A corner that hollers and yells too much is no good," De Jesus told reporters Thursday.

Is that kind of chaotic hollering and yelling possible in Clottey's corner Saturday night?

"Yes. [Clottey] has his group; they like to yell. I told them, 'You holler, you're out.'"

As for how well his charge will do, DeJesus offered this kinda sorta optimistic prediction: "If he listens, I've got a winner."



"I've been through it all," he said. "It doesn't faze me -- training. It's about the one who wants it most. I have the stronger and bigger guy. My guy is a little slower, but we'll put on some different movements. I feel confident the bigger guy will beat the little guy."

As we watched the crush of people watching Manny Pacquiao's public workout Tuesday, I asked a couple of people whether they could think of any historical parallels.

A couple did argue that, at his peak, Oscar De La Hoya was as big, at least in certain markets, and that a similar event in San Antonio would have brought similar numbers to watch the "Golden Boy." But apart from that? Sugar Ray Leonard? Dare we even say it: Muhammad Ali?

"He's getting there," said Bob Arum, who promoted several Ali fights, of the comparison with "The Greatest." "The difference is that some of Ali's popularity was ideological, with the Nation of Islam, the opposition to the Vietnam War. As a result, there were some people who detested him. That isn't the case with this kid."

Sal Cano writes to offer his opinion on Saturday's fight:

"The perception from the casual boxing fan is that Manny Pacquiao is unbeatable at this point in his career, that he destroyed the legendary De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton and Miguel Cotto.

"However, the reality is that Oscar was completely weight-drained, Ricky Hatton's two previous fights prior to Manny were against Juan Lazcano [who had him beat until the ref allowed Hatton to tie his shoelaces] and Paulie Malignaggi [who couldn't hurt a fly], and Miguel Cotto has not been the same fighter since the Antonio Margarito destruction.

"The reality is that Zab Judah is a very fast southpaw who fought his best fight in years against Clottey using combinations to the body, movement and hooks and did NOTHING to Clottey. Clottey also withstood the most punches ever thrown in a round by Antonio Margarito [who possibly might have had loaded gloves] and never once budged. Clottey's inactivity is the only reason he lost to Cotto.

"I'm not saying Clottey wins, nor do I take anything away from any of Pacquiao's victories, but to say Saturday is a mismatch is far more perception than reality."