Odlanier Solis vs a '92 Riddick Bowe

Careful, you are making far too much sense.

There are many, many amateur stars who were nothing special as pros. And you are correct, there is a big difference between being a successful amatuer and a successful pro.

 

It doesn't mean you will be a shit one either.

YOU DON'T SAY.

yeah, and you named...one.

So why did the press all feel he was going to be far better than he "turned out to be"??? And where do you draw the line between the bummishness of the Champion and the bummishness of the Contender???

 

Man, Solis isn't good. I really don't get why you can't see that. Why do you insist on promoting Solis?

 

It's even tougher to carry success from ammy to pro when you get fat.

 

::

 

Because I liked the look of him against Vitali & think he does allot of things well. And I think he was a victim of some rather horrific luck. Simple as that. I understand having anything positive to say about a heavyweight is an unforgivable frivolity, but there you go.

 

Man, it isn't luck when you're out of shape and you hurt your knee while competing in a sport.

The fact is, for as good as he looked in under a round with Vitali, he wasn't able to go three minutes without getting his world rocked.

 

Getting his legs turned to jelly wasn't luck, it was a punch from Vitali.

 

How "good" he looked is being overrated.

Like me, Ugo and a couple of others said on the GD thread, the round was actually very even. Sure Solis landed a couple of decent counters, but Vitali was wakling him down, showing no respect, and ultimately KO'd him with the first right hand he landed.

Like Ugo also said, JC Gomez of all people actually had a better first round against Vitali, then got whitewashed.

 

I agree totally. When you get knocked out by one punch in the first round, even if you looked decent in the first couple of minutes, it's not really something you can use as evidence of decency.

 

Yep.

 

I'm sure you consider

- Being the fattest man in Ethiopia
- Being the sanest inmate in a mental asylum
- Being the smartest guy at the Special Olympics

to all be huge accomplishments as well.

Regarding an Olympic Gold medalist being a bum IN THE PROS, he isn't the first, nor will he be the last.

But nobody said that being a gold medalist necessarily made you a shit pro. We just said it was dumb as fuck to cite it as evidence of being a good pro, which is what YOU are doing.

 

watch the fight for yourself, you'll see it was a very close competitive fight, and that wasn't the Chagaev of now, who's been shit even since he had liver problems due to hepatits

 

I'm 50-50 on Solis, I thought he was ordinary before the Vitaly fight. But he looked very good and showed good skills before the freak injury vs Vitaly. So maybe it was a case of him undertraining for fighters he knew weren't on his level. Still, it's hard to praise him as a world beater for a fight that only lasted 3 minutes and that he lost to boot. And wether his chin is pure crystal or the kd was due to the injury, I can't tell for sure.

 

Yes but temple shots aren't generally a reflection of a guys chin, either. They're not 'lucky' in any pejorative sense, but they are near-freak shots, you don't very often see shots like that. You can watch 50 more fights and never see another KD like that.

I just think Solis was probably better than we got to see, or will probably get a chance to see now, by the time he's gone through cruciate surgery, rehab, etc. It's an opinion. I have little basis for it, other than my eyes. Im allowed to have opinions I have little basis for, it's enshrined in sub clause 3.9 of the rules in my head.

 

That's pretty much EXACTLY my position on him, too. Nothing more, nothing less.

I just find the triumphalist slagging of him after that fight, as if everyones skepticism was totally vindicated by a weird temple shot and a knee injury quite grating. That's all Im really getting my panties in a twist about here, not a committed defence of Solis. There was nothing conclusive about this fight, it raised questions and provided no concrete answers yet slews of people are bent over double sniffing their own farts over it.