Champion Sure Looks Like a Keeper for L.A.

Well, he’s ours now.

For bloody or worse. In stitches and in health. Till two good left hooks do us part.

Vitali Klitschko officially became a Los Angeles fighter Saturday, much in the manner that the Clippers once became a Los Angeles team.

It was strange, it was messy, but, man, was it entertaining.

Ten months after beating on Lennox Lewis before being dragged away with a filleted eyelid, Klitschko returned to Staples Center to beat on Corrie Sanders, only this time he actually won.

Nearly eight rounds, a TKO, a heavyweight championship and more love than the last two weeks worth of Laker games.

Most of the 17,320 roared as Klitschko survived a first-round flurry to insistently pound Sanders until he was spitting red.

So what if Sanders arrived in the ring looking as if he prepared not by punching a heavy bag, but eating one?

“Sanders would have beaten him if he trained!” shouted contender James Toney afterward.

The crowd screamed Klitschko’s name as he struggled to climb on the corner of ropes afterward and wave.

So what if Sanders had essentially just one type of punch, in the manner that Dave Kingman had one type of swing, a roundhouse filled with strikeouts?

“It was garbage,” Toney said.

But one man’s trash can be an entire town’s treasure, particularly in a suddenly bleak heavyweight division where Jerry Quarry would have been unbeaten and where the best two fighters -- Roy Jones Jr. and Toney -- ate their way into the division.

Klitschko may be a tad slow and not particularly skilled, but his 13 soul-filled rounds at his neighborhood ring have energized the boxing locals and given him a new work address.

“This is a big relief, I feel a huge weight off of my shoulders,” said Klitschko, his eyes shining after being nearly blinded the last time he was here. “I achieved my goal and my dream.”

He didn’t do it alone. Since big-time boxing matches began showing up here a couple of years ago, nobody -- not even Oscar De La Hoya -- received the sustained ovation given Klitschko on Saturday.

Some half-priced tickets, but full-throated yells.

They love that he is the aggressor, chasing Lewis last year, storming Sanders on Saturday, even though, OK, Sanders moved about as fast as Michael Buffer’s vowels.

They love that he seems human, getting pounded several times in the first round, just as he was pounded last year, but once again blinking through the bruises.

And they love that, well, Klitschko seems to love them.

Why wouldn’t Los Angeles embrace a fighter who enters the ring to the strains of “Hotel California,” and then shrugs off his robe to reveal sleek black shorts from Hugo Boss?

“After the fight, Vitali said, ‘I hope you have me back,’ ” said Tim Leiweke, Staples Center president. “I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ”

Leiweke said he told Klitschko that he would do, “Anything short of writing a blank check to have you come back.”

Klitschko said he would endure anything short of another eyeball torture to come back.

“I am really happy to fight here,” he said. “I hope it’s not the last fight. I hope I will be fighting in Staples Center again.”

Count the television partners as believers.

“The electricity of a packed house at Staples Center makes a big difference,” said Ross Greenburg, president of HBO Sports. “They like Klitschko here, he made a statement, it makes for great television.”

How much did they like him?

When Lewis was introduced after the fourth round, at the site of the final fight of his career, the crowd booed.

“I hope Lennox Lewis will come out of retirement and fight me in the same ring, in the same arena as we did a year ago,” Klitschko said.

Judging from Lewis’ um, healthy appearance, soon he might not be able to even fit into the same ring.

Klitschko could also choose to fight Lamon Brewster who, like Corrie Sanders, whipped his brother Wladimir. But how would they sell it? “Avenging the Stiff?”

A better fight would be the rematch with Chris Byrd, who holds the IBF title and who gave Vitali his only other loss four years ago.

Of course, there’s also Jones or Toney, the latter so empowered by Klitschko’s performance that he took the podium before Klitschko’s news conference and refused to give it up.

“He’s a coward, like all those Russians are cowards,” shouted Toney, who remained brave only until his people quietly ushered him away.

So the choices aren’t great. The division is lousy. But one of those belts has a home, and it fits just fine.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.