Have to go with Klitschko......height, angles, jab, great chin and plenty of strength. He has enough to beat Liston. Sonny never showed he could fight a lot of rounds, and Klitschko just threw 1000 punches in his last fight. It's just a bad stylistic match for Sonny. He looks marginally faster than Sam Peter.
His opposition all hit as hard if not a lot harder than the guys Liston fought. You make one mistake against guys like Sanders, Johnson, Lewis, Williams, Hide....forget about it. So obviously, Vitali is not in the business of making too many mistakes. Vitali could fuck around all night vs Floyd Patterson and he would probably get away with it.
"...You make one mistake against guys like Sanders, Johnson, Williams, Hide...forget about it..." I honestly thought you were joking here for a second. Are you really being serious, portraying these guys as that formidable? They match up positively abysmally with Williams, Machen, Folley & co.
this is an interesting one i'd have to go with Liston, Liston had a THUMPING and accurate Jab, I think Liston gets hated on due to the Ali fight but he was a great fighter.. when he fought Ali he was close to 50 some say, earlier on he was faster and more effective with the jab Vitali always suprises me, he looks robotic but his footwork is better than it looks somehow but I think Liston is too good and would bust him up
Vitaly would pepper him with jabs and right hands all night long like he's done to almost all his opponents. Liston didn't had the height to pose any problem whatsoever to Vitaly. VK by late round TKO.
Corrie Sanders is probably his best win. A 3 round fighter, in effect. I think that puts a few things in perspective.
Most of his opponents aren't fit to lick Liston's boots. Watching Klitschko, "pepper" his frankly despicable opponents, "all night long" & concluding he'd do the same to the likes of Liston is comparable to watching a man out-run a child & using the ease of his victory to project him a winner against Usain Bolt. You don't get to the moon riding a bicycle, & you don't get a win over Sonny Liston by being a stand-up, stiff-as-a-board, teak-tough punching bag, which is all Klitschko truly is.
Which Liston's opponents do you think were on Vitali's level, if some were? Machen, Valdez, Folley, Patterson, Williams? I mean that is a solid record and Liston fought all the best comers of his time, but seriously I don't see any of these being stylistically equivalent to Vitali, nor do I think any of them was nearly as good head-to-head
They are not stylistically similar, but I take a much dimmer view of Klitschko than you evidently do. He was never as gifted as little brother, & until Wlad's chin became apparent, everyone had Vitali rightly pegged as the lesser of the two. He's just flat-out too hittable to beat the great power-punchers of the divisions' history. Machen wasn't a better fighter than Klitschko? Folley wasn't? We will have to agree to disagree, because I am intractable on them being better. Williams was not much better than Klitschko, & either was Valdes (if at all), but Liston annihilated those men.
That we have to disagree on too. Granted, Vitali has not fought great opponents, but he has fought about ten guys who have been ranked to top-10 at the fight time and in progress gotten hit less than perhaps any heavyweight champ apart from Clay. He looks easy to hit, but if you look at the evidence, there is none. No, they were not. Their technique was closer to instructional books and Machen and Folley were more fluid, but that's it. I know many disagree with me about the meaning of size, but I seriously doubt that 195 lbs Folley or 200 lbs Machen could make an even fight against Vitali, at that point the difference is just too much
Williams, Machen and Folley provide none of the stylistic problems that guys like Sanders faced. Sanders was a two-fisted lefty with more than enough power and speed to cause problems. Zora Folley, on the other hand, was Henry Coopers bitch. Yes, that Henry Cooper. Didn't Eddie Machen get knocked out in 1 round by Johannson?
Height Chin Power Jab Strength Angles Toughness Amateur Background Reach Klitschko has them all. Makes for a very dangeyos poyson.
Yeah.........Mike Tyson was pretty much the same. If he fought anyone with some stones before losing to a 42-1 underdog who fought off raw emotion he might have been found out a lot sooner. Sanders would have wiped the floor with a lot of fighters in the 60's who were simply unaccustomed to fighting a 6'4" 225lb southpaw who could bang with either hand. I mean Nino Valdes was shite and he made a rep out of being tall and a bit heavy handed.
Fine. Liston indeed. Cleveland Williams once showed up in England to fight some Welsh bum and then said he was afraid, and that there were "demons" or something. :atu:
