Wladimir Klitschko vs. Sultan Ibragimov February!!!

John Ruiz is active.

 

CHAMPEEN, huh? ::
Does it really bother you that much that Ruiz is the heavyweight with the best resume ever since Lennox TKOed Quitaly?

 

I want Ibragimov to win, but I think Wlad is too tall and rangy and will likely stop him.

 

:bears:


Exactly. And that bum Joony has the audacity to think Povetkin is no better than Ibgragimov.

Povs just stopped Byrd and Bragimov couldn't even beat Ray Austin. ::

 

i'd rather see wlad/chagaev.

 

Agreed, that'd be a battle between the real 1st and 2nd best.

 

You mean like you, mr king of the Bullshit artists?

::

 

probably happens and if pictures were all you would find it hard to believe that the little red-headed piggy has a chance in hell...





doesn't seem intimidated though... Fucker doesn't know what he got himself into... :doh: :doh: :flip:

 

And garbage boxers in a garbage division.

 

to quote Neil:

"garbage fight."

 

I do find it hard to believe

 

And yet, there is nobody on the planet who could hang with Wlad right now. Also, Wlad would give a good fight for every champion in the history

 

:: ::

No he didn't, but that was damned funny.

 

Corey Sanders?

He couldn't give "a good fight" to Ross Purrity, and has only defeated one world champion in his entore career. As it stands now, he's one of the worst champions in history (only slightly above his brother).
John Ruiz shits all over Wlad's resume.
To say that Wlad would give ANY champion "a good fight" is ridcuolous.
He's shown absolutely nothing to deserve such accolades.

 

1 - Hence, garbage fighters, garbage division.
2 - :: Good one.

 

Heavyweight: best in boxing. Like it or not. Midgets might also look good playing basketball, but they would not win against real players.

Name me someone whom the Wlad we have seen under Stewart's coaching would not give a fight to.

 

HWT at this moment is NOT the best division in boxing. Sorry. That's not a hard and fast unmoveable rule that everyone who likes boxing is supposed to adhere to.

Marquee/glamour division does NOT always equal BEST division.

As to the second point....I've never understood this line of thinking. What do I care if they could beat up "real" heavyweights?

I'm watching for the SPORT and for the skill level therein, at whatever the weight.

Peace.

 

:: Two in a row. Where do you get 'em from? ::

 

The thing is: heavyweight boxing does not look as good as it used to look in 60s because the men in the ring are bigger and stronger. That's why the fights are slower now and they don't have the same boody coordination as the small men of the past. Midgets always have better (faster and technical) looking fights, of course, and if that is all you want, then sure, heavyweight is not for you. But that doesn't make the fighters "garbage", since guys of now would dominate the guys from old decades.

It is like tennis: not everybody wants to see the players of today having serve competitions, they would like to see the games from wooden racquet era. Yet if they played against each other, the old-timers would get whipped despite looking better

 

So you have nothing to say really. Got it

 

I agree with you that Wlad is a monkey, who's not worth anything without his animal trainer (Stewart) in his corner.
Even so, we've seen mediocre bums (like Peter) giving Wlad the fight of his life and flooring him half dozen times WITH Stewart in his corner.
When a weak-punching, no-chin having bum, like Peter, is on the verge of defeating you, you're not giving any decent champion "a good fight".
(before you start yelling that Peter is NOT a weak-punching bum, please name 3 guys he KOed)
Wlad is getting KTFO (as always) against any remotely good champion.

 

dsimon writes:

Silly hypothesis. :notallthere:

 

Just something that most people don't realize and most of the rest don't want to see

 

There is a small kernel of truth to what you say. But you're assuming that there is this HUGE average size difference vs. other eras in boxing (let's say 50s-60's; 70's-80's; and 90's-00's)....and that's not necessarily true.

There are more big men now than there were before - but the instances are still relatively rare and overall there are plenty of fighters around the 6'0" - 6'3" and 210-230 lb. range.

And guys like Lewis, Wlad and others looked/look plenty fast and coordinated.

Saying that guys now would "dominate" guys of all other eras simply because they are "bigger" and "stronger" (both somewhat erroneous assumptions to begin with) is just as ridiculous as saying that the "old-time" fighters dominate the modern ones because they were "tougher."

I broke this down for you in another thread, measurements and everything.

It is, and always SHOULD be, on a case-by-case basis. Size or strength ALONE do not count for much in boxing.

You have to have blinders on if you can't recognize that overall boxing has shown some decline in depth of talent - and that the trend is MOST noticeable at Heavyweight.

Even the "smaller" fighters at HWT - and there are plenty of them - simply aren't as DEEP as other eras at this point.

HWT simply isn't as deep in terms of talent, as competitive, and at this time isn't featuring as much skill.

And there aren't that many young prospects out there on the horizon at this point.

That's not an argument that "all older fighters were better" - that's an argument that boxing is cyclical and right now we are in a bit of a valley...especially at Heavyweight.

The globalization of boxing and of Heavyweights is helping things even out a bit...but I'm not so sure Heavyweight can recover fully enough to be at the same depth as other "golden eras" given various socio-economic factors.

Peace.

 

Damn.
Nearly two pages of unintentional humour by Ugotabe Kidding resulting in a free-for-all owning.

:bears:

 

Shut up up there British boy, we adults are actually having a conversation here.

Heavyweight boxing looks different than it used to look and it has drifted away from other weight divisions in that sense too. My main problem is, that the automatic thought everybody gets is that the change is for worse. I find it difficult to believe since in EVERY SPORT where results can be measured, the evolution goes forwards. No matter how popular the sport has been earlier, I doubt there is any (male) sport where the world record was from seventies, let alone results of 1950s had been better than they are now.

I do understand that there are exceptions to rules and some guys of the past have been exceptional overall. I do think that Muhammad Ali would still be a factor in the division because of styles. However there does come a point when a big man beats a small man despite of how much "better" the small guy looks. That's why we have weight divisions and that's why the limit of heavyweights has come up 25 lbs since it was invented.

It is true that boxing is no longer the big money sport which lured athletical big men to take it up the way it did in the 1970s.
I just think that the change of the sport has more to do with guys growing bigger and training different way than back then. The sport might not be as aestethically pleasing anymore, but that doesn't make it worse or any easier.

 

Fatter? Slower? :dunno:

 

Right. Heavyweights have always been slower and fatter than the bantamweights so we can assume that bantamweights would ominate heavies from any era.

Athletes of today are also bigger in hockey, football, basketball, everything. Does it also mean they are slower and worse?

 

yeah, but you can easily make the argument that today's athletes in other sports are more agile than those of the past, even as they get bigger (especially basketball). Think about it - 20 years ago, Magic Johnson as a 6'9" Point Guard was considered the exception to the rule. Today, it's hardly unheard for guys all the way up to 6'11" running the floor.

You can't make the same argument in today's heavyweight division, which is littered with fatter, slower and far less talented fighters than in just about any other era. Wlad is regarded as far and away the best heavyweight today because he's become the exception to the rule.

Also, a lot of the guys on the way up look like cruiserweights trapped in a fat suit, many of whom punch as if they're apologizing. The allure of the heavyweight division is that one punch could generally change the course of the fight. Yet today, the boxing world continues to sift through a sea of Chris Byrd's while desperately in search of its next Mike Tyson. Whereas knockouts are coming far more frequently in the lower weight classes, divisions where the biggest arguments (especially on this board, and you included in the group) have always been that 2,000 punches are meaningless when the threat of a knockout is non-existent.

 

And my theory there is that in this sense boxing reminds tennis. The guys there are also slower moving and bigger than the ones of yesterday. Yet, if they played 1 to 1, the modern guys would win (nobody disagrees), because they hit the ball so much harder. I do believe that heavyweights these days hit harder than ever. Thus the guys are training mainly power punching and hardly open up. That makes for worse fights sure. Yet, outboxing them is difficult since single punches are fatal.

Of course, I have little evidence of this theory and boxing can't be measured. I am just wondering that if these guys are so slow, so unskilled and so easy to outbox, then why don't we have ANY good heavyweights -210 these days? And where are the KO artists the size of Sonny Liston? Wouldn't it be plausibe to imagine that at least SOMEONE would deliver?

The guys of smaller weight classes are becoming stronger too, lightweights today are much bigger than the ones of 1960s. Also in very small divisions the differences in level are very big since there are very few people (let alone athletes) these days who weigh under 115 lbs