Heavyweight division officialy dead

There is nothing in it for most Americans. Thus there is nothing in it, QED.

 

Kellermen tends to like slick, black southpaws.... and no one in this or any other country has ever taken his opinion seriously.

but during this entertaining stretch of Wlad's career, wasn't he getting a fair amount of accolades during that time? He was on HBO every fight, I remember during and after the McCline fight Lampley & Merchant were calling him one of the most complete offensive fighters they had seen in years, he was put in the Ocean's Eleven movie alongside Lennox. I remember him being fairly well-received before he altered his style to protect his chinny chin chin

 

Agendas, agendas everywhere, nothing's as it seems.

 

He was by most, for sure.

I'm one of the few who have always rated Vitali a bit higher than Wlad, but ironically it is because he used to fight like Wlad does now. Distance, distance, distance, bam. Now, I think Wlad is harder to beat than he used to be and Vitali is probably easier to beat than he used to be...I still favor Vitali, but I can see reasons to believe Wlad is better. Fact is, there's always been reasons to favor Wlad, but some of them are shifting reasons as they've matured as fighters.

 

Nah. He had a "quitters reputation", which was enhanced by the loss to Sanders, depsite....it seems, never actually quitting in either fight.

Kellerman reserved an especial hard-on for him throughout.

Somebody takes Kellerman seriously. ESPN and HBO in particular.

 

I think Wlad has definitely improved these last 5 years. Vitali's slowing up a bit but he's probably still more difficult to beat.

 

Even if there were compliments, there was the buttfuck Merchant comments about his heart and stuff, a la Purritty.

 

No. Everything is as it is.

You watch.

I give it, oh, another month, before we are treated to the latest installation of "heavyweight doom and gloom"....usually after another possible threat to the fraternal hegemony is removed.

 

Delusional. Psychopath.

If I could make the voices stop I would, man.

 

::

You don't believe I have a disease of the mind.

 

I don't like Wlad because I don't like watching him fight.

I don't like Vitali because my favourite boxer ever is Lennox Lewis.

I like plenty of eastern European boxers.

Anything you see beyond that... just voices.

 

because there were vastly MORE FIGHTERS and because in general, America produced the highest QUALITY and QUANTITY of fighters above featherweight... this is indisputable

 

Things change. People change. We all can change.

 

there's been no discernible change in European boxing, man

 

:scratcher:

 

I think there has been an improvement. Partly because the top guys are more willing to train in the USA than before. Also, the fall of the iron curtain IS a factor, however much you want to believe otherwise

 

Can't say I agree with that. It hasn't grown to the extent some of these chaps would have you believe. But it has improved, mostly because guys like the Klitschko's wouldn't have been professionals in the past.

 

somewhat, SOMEWHAT

but English boxing is certainly no better

 

I think UK boxing has improved, due to guys like Terry Edwards at amateur level bringing through talent. The results are there.

 

Eubank, Benn, Watson, Graham, Hamed are all superior, to my observations, to any Englishman currently competing

you can go back further to John Conteh as well...

 

feel the same :scared2:

 

England never had it so good, to be fair.

And involving England excludes all the good Welsh and Scottish fighters. Both of them.

 

Khan is doing ok. I mean you may say he's an athlete only, but say he pulls off a huge win - let's say Floyd for example - even with this horrible style, would that not put him ahead of a few of those guys?

Guys like DeGale and Groves are only 12 or so fights in, bit unfair to compare them to those guys already.

 

Yes, buy could say that McGuigan, Bruno, Sibson, Minter, McDonnell, Pat Cowdell, Kirkland Laing, Honeyghan were better again.

So obviously British boxing is on its last legs.

Which can't be true either.

 

If Khan beat a guy like Floyd or Pac before they got to a hundred years old, I'd have to reexamine everything I know about boxing, life, love, newtonian physics, music, my own very soul.

 

The world is a strange place Hut. Strange things can happen.

My point is, you can only make fair comparisons once a fighters career is over. Case in point - I had a look at that "wayback machine" bam posted in TAAA, and had a look through the old secondsout posts. I'm not going to say names but there were respected posters legitimately picking Michael Brodie to beat Manny Pacquiao. Preposterous now, right? But at the time maybe it didn't seem that way. Opinions can change rapidly in this sport.

 

exactly::

 

what english/welsh/scot fighter right now is better than those guys?

 

Might well have been me! I took one look at Manny struggling like hell with Agapito Sanchez at Superbantam and thought he was too small for featherweight ::

But fair point I suppose.

 

it's not that big a factor, honestly

what IS a factor is that professional boxers are now fighting often more like modern amateurs than ever before... The styles of Iron Curtain fighters were always well suited to the amateur game, hence their generally solid results in amateur competition

Pro boxing generally has never more closely resembled it's amateur counterpart as it does right now... that is a BIG part of all of this, including the success of so many never before big players on the world stage -- that and the drastic reduction in participation by the world's historic number one boxing power (the biggest factor of all that it simply eats at many Europeans to acknowledge)