As he was being introduced, Charr did a homosexual version of Aaron Pryor's practice of pointing across the ring at his opponent
Where Pryor's point seemed to indicate something along the lines of "You're dead"... Charr's indicated "I'm FABULOUS!"
Charr's strategy seems to be covering up for 2:30 of each round and then spend 30 seconds tossing meaningless cuffing slaps at Vitali
Yup. Now we shall see if Klitschko is a hypocrite or he in fact will do what Lewis didn't have the balls to and give Charr the huge money rematch that the world awaits or if Vitaly will tuck his tail between his legs and retire just like Lennox did.
Dutch commentator says Vitaly is running for Mayor for the city of Kiev, and that he has a good chance of getting that job, wich ofcourse would effectively end his career in boxing.
Hopefully this is the last time we have to suffer from watching Vitaly defend his belt against a guy that Tex Cobb woulda smoked. Pathetic
Tex Cobb wouldn't have smoked shit. Charr was OK, just clueless, that was his worst attribute. Chin was OK, balls were intact, desire was there, just no fucking idea how to go about business, against a guy who at 41 has every idea how to go about business. Once again, there was a small bit of quality which most will have willfully missed, its a perfect check-hook that Vitali got off to stop the guy. But Vitali is finished......he needs to retire now. His degradation as a fighter is now beyond preliminary, it is pronounced, chronic even. The power is the first thing to go and he used to back up guys with his left arm, now he is backpedalling and throwing 2X punches as the left isn't the weapon it used to be. Stoppage, for what it is worth, now seems better than when I looked at it last. Charr really was bursted open.
Ostensibly it was poor. Procedurally it was poor. I don't like to see fights stopped mid-round. I like to see discussions and doctors. I'd have loved nothing more than for Vitali to go to work on the guy. A gorefest might have provided an element of "fun". Look at the overall.....guy hadn't won a minute of the fight, had been bowled over in the 2nd....and the cut was really quite deep and spurting blood. Its only poor in terms of how he went about it. We both know he would have been back at the start of the 5th having another look and would have waved it off then. Bad continuations are no worse than bad stoppages, think Joe vs Jones.
I think a decent way to grade a stoppage is imagine you were the stopped fighter looking back at the tape the next day. In your heart of hearts would you be glad the ref/doc called it? In this case, no way, i'd still be going mental.
At what? Hair-arrangements? :: Cobb was awful. Charr was awful. And Vitali only fought the guy because he'd plain run out of guys to fight. Yes, Cobb was better, but it's like saying that an IROC Z28 is better than a Lincoln '86 Town Car.
I am disappointed myself, I would have preferred if it went on, Vitali would have opened another few cuts and we could have at least had that farce-masking phenomenon that is a gore-fest, think Oscar vs Chavez. But, with my thinking-hat on, the stoppage is largely bereft of any real controversy. Charrs was getting smoked, fortwith.
Out of curiosity, where is Vitaly digging up this garbage, fight after fight? Why didn't he fight Rahman, Ruiz, Haye, Valuev, Chagaev, when he had the chance? It's beyond embarassing at this point, even Wladimir seems to have a bigger heart, when it comes to choosing somewhat decent opposition.
I'm not criticizing Vitali, you crazy bastard:: I am just pointing out that Cobb, while certainly very limited, was a better fighter than Manuel Charr. He could take anything thrown at him and he kept throwing punches, legitimately tried to win. He could not beat the best... Holmes, Norton, Dokes... but they all respected him for his toughness and his persistence.
Hut is right that the stoppage was somewhat premature but Irish is also right that it doesn't really matter... Charr was going to take a drubbing... He was never winning this fight
