I know the Klits are hated around here, but I for one appreciate them. They've been good for boxing; fairly dominant White European heavyweights. It's a nice change from the black American domination of the division since the 60s. They may have relatively boring styles, but so too did Lennox Lewis as many seem to conveniently forget. But what we mustn't forget is that each brother has an exceedingly high KO percentage and there's nothing better than dominant Heavyweight champions that knock most of their opponents out. You may hate on them now, but when they leave the scene the division would truly be in a mess and you'll then realize what you had. Who appreciates the Klits?
Not too many here. They are white AND European. A guy like Roy will get all kinds of praise here even though 98% of his oppositions were bums but he had that black style people like around here. Klitchkos deserve some respect but they're not getting much here.
It has nothing to do with race, that's a bunch of bullshit that says a lot about the perspective of the person propagating that POV. It has to do with the fact that Vitali is a lumbering oaf and Wlad is a chinless ninny, and both of them being boring as all fuck.
I respect Wlad, he's very good but I don't really enjoy watching him. I'm a big fan of Vitali though.
Decent fighters who would have been "Champions" in just about any era bar possibly the late 60s to late 70's {i.e. 10 years of a 110 year history} when the singularity of the Championship would have played as much a role in their failing to land the title as anything else. Larry Holmes was a fine champion but the multiplication of titles, in which Holmes himself was complicit, leaves many openings for the Klitschkos, even if they cannot beat Holmes himself, which is up for debate. Bear in mind that the so-called glorious period for the heavyweights may not even have been 10 years long, by 1978 Ali was losing to guys who had 7 fights or so. Spinks was brutalized by Gerrie Coetzee shortly after Ali won a decision over Spinks. Perversely, this era of what were then regarded as bums {Page, Dokes, Coetzee, Berbick, Tate, Weaver} is now being regarded as some sort of a "lost era" whom revisionists are lauding and praising to all get out. :shit: Traditionally, the heavyweight division has been the weakest of the marquee divisions {Welterweight, Middleweight and Heavyweight} Most humanoids simply do not reach the size, or acquire the resistance levels to operate at that level, no matter what the era. Humans are more of a 5'9" to 6'0" species and retain greater fluidity at those dimensions. Big, capable fluid guys are a rarity. Its that simple. The notion that the "Good American Heavyweights" are playing football is quite preposterous, and is a recent invention of the Yankee press. By way of destroying this myth I will tell a simple story: A man buys 2 KG of steaks. He also owns a cat which weighs 2KG. His wife is at home, and she calls some friends over to have a meal. The man returns from work to find his steaks have been eaten. He asks where his steaks are and the wife says the cat ate them. The man takes the cat, and weighs the cat in at exactly 2KG. He then turns to his wife and says "if this is my steaks, where is my cat"????? If all the good American heavyweights are playing football today, then who was playing football when America ruled the heavyweight scene??? Yet more brilliant American athletes? :shit: America's population is going up, not down. The draft is getting more competitive, not less competitive. By rights, there should be more and more black destroyers falling through the cracks of football and basketball and finding themselves slugging it out for a living. Fighters do not always fight because they lack the talent to do anything else. Sometimes this is the case. Crucially, fighters fight because they are fighters. If America has more basketball players or more football players, it is because it is producing more football players and more basketball players. It certainly is not producing more fighters. Furthermore, this theory is critically undermined as it considers only that lesser element of fighting, namely the physical/athletic aspect, and excludes the simple reality that athleticism is useless without the requisite mentality. Fighters do not fight because they lack the talent to do anything else. Sometimes this is the case. Crucially, fighters fight because they are fighters. The old Soviet Amateur system was producing talented guys right into the mid 1990's- the fractious and downright uneconomical nature of the former USSR saw the better fighters undergo their first migration- WEST, to the now unified and prosperous Germany. Teutonic efficiency saw that these fighters were presented with the best training facilities, sparring, accommodation, TV exposure, you name it. The raw product was fed into the finishing school that is Germany. What you are dealing with here is an ethnic, economic and demographic phenomenon which, frankly, is not done any justice whatsoever by flimsy theories about people playing American Football :shit: Charlie Powell. Michael Grant. Wasted.
Actually Irish, you say that fighters fight because they are fighters. Then you use Michael Grant as an example. I think he's an example of a "fighter" who fights even though he is not really a fighter.
And what happened to Grant? Grant was a talented athlete, an absolute specimen, who had gotten into College off the back of athletic prowess, and then fell back out of college having failed to follow up on his academics. Grant decided, whilst watching one part of the Holyfield-Bowe trilogy {Holyfield being a classic example of a fighter-first-athlete-second guy} that he could give this boxing a go. He showed some grit vs Golota but folded, psychologically, when he faced Lewis. Compare that to Klitschko's showing vs Lewis. But Grant is the sort of guy who the Football and Basketball leagues are supposedly replete with. Maybe they are. Maybe they aren't. But Grant was not the real deal, so even if those leagues are full of that stuff...so what??
I've grown to appreciate them rather allot the last couple of years. Both excellent fighters who train properly, conduct themselves well, fight all comers and so on. I see no reason not to appreciate them.
I think you're missing the point of the expression. It's not that you can defaultly take a football or basketball player and turn him into a top fighter - this theory has been disproven time and time again (and the same is true in fighters falsely believing pure athleticism can allow them to excel in other fields). More so that in this day and age, the same kids who were once upon a time being directed towards boxing gyms are now being pointed to football fields and basketball courts.
I've definitely grown to appreciate the Klits more so now than a decade ago, to where I'm a fan of both. There are exceptions where I don't necessarily root against them but root more for the other guy (Chambers v. Wlad, Arreola v. Vitali), whereas once upon a time I pretty much just rooted for a loss. The thing that gets lost when comparing the Klitschkos to Lewis or Holmes is that the latter two were both also far more appreciated after the fact than during their respective reigns. When all is said and done, the Klitschkos will most likely get their due respect (especially when one (or both) of them beats Haye). Not sure the part about their being White Europeans is the least bit relevant. And last I checked, Lennox Lewis hardly qualifies as a Black American. He claimed a lot of nationalities, but American was never one of them. So the statement about the heavyweight division being dominated by that type of fighter really hasn't been true for more than a decade.
Marciano went into the Army, got demobbed after WW2. Then he went into the Baseball leagues, and got dropped when he had a bad arm. He ended up in boxing, because that's what he was good at. Is Marciano the exception? I can't say. I personally think that fighters gravitate towards fighting, from the beginning. Of course, it then becomes a game of semantics- do fighters become fighters, because they are innately thus, or because they decided to man up and become fighters, having, from an early age, failed at everything else. It's a fine line, and everybody has their opinion on it. I think that American standards dropped slightly and Europeans raised slightly, but critically, I would argue that American standards had dropped much much earlier than the Klitschkos arrival, depending on what date that is, 1996, 2000, whatever. The arrival of Evander Holyfield into the division, the defeat of Mike Tyson and his subsequent imprisonment, Bowe's capitulation/quitting in the Olympic Fina and George Foreman's adipose-laden comebackl had all occurred by mid 1992. That's 4 years BEFORE Wlad Klitschko won the Olympic Gold and it is a full 2 years before a former, and now fat and slow victim of Tommy Morrison, George Foreman, KO'd with one punch a former 175lb Southpaw, Michael Moorer. So if there is a rot, it precedes the Klitschkos by up to the best part of a decade. Always remember, Pat Putnam was writing stories in SI deriding the heavyweights, and using Holyfield vs Holmes {W12 } as ammunition for same.
True. White European isn't all that relevant, but it's a good side story is all I meant. True. Lennox wasn't an African American, and it was a good change there as well. Just like Barack Obama, it's good to switch things up a bit.
Lewis was despised in the same circles that the Klitschkos are. Steve Farhood got so sick and tired of Wally Matthews that he literary-bitch-slapped him, stating that if "Lewis can't win" {referring to Matthews putting down Lewis performance against Grant*} ...that he "might as well keep on winning" __________ * Matthews referred to Lewis performance as "that of an amateur, albeit a very powerful amateur"
