No. By ring rankings Louis and Ali are the best(you can ask the Classic if you wish); if you're asking for 'names' whatever, Lewis and Holy have great ones. But then again Louis has 3 decades as a presence in heavyweight boxing so it's not really fair to compare him to anyone else. Or be surprised when people call his competition bums.
I think it's genuinely unfortunate that Wladimir Klitschko has still yet to receive the credit that he truly deserves.He's not American,doesn't fight in an exciting or aggressive enough manner,so we're going to completely discredit his entire career and simply refuse to credit him for fighting,beating and completely dominating the best opposition that's currently available. We're in an era of boxing where many of the supposed elite fighters fail and refuse to fight the best their division has to offer.No other fighter in the sport can claim to have genuinely claimed to have cleared their division in the same manner that Wladimir Klitschko has done over the last five years.I have far more respect for Wladimir than certain other heavyweights of the past,who failed to consistently fight the best contenders of their respective era's.
Right. Larry Holmes OPENLY ducked Greg Page and Pinklon Thomas. Even beloved Joe Louis did not fight the black fighters for a long time after John Henry Lewis- no fault of his own, but its a fact. Wlad will fight anyone except his brother.
Louis didn't have tag team titles, everyone knew the Brown Bomber was the man, today we have tag team champs, no single champ, hopefully Vitali loses so we can get rid of this 1a and 1b crap.
Also not Wlad's fault. Vitali will retire & Wlad will win the WBC eventually. Unification with all the current politics of boxing is nearly impossible and Wlad's making it happen. BTW, Louis is my #1 ATG Heavyweight followed by Ali & Lewis. Wlad certainly deserves to have his name mentioned along with these greats although not as high on the list. The correct thing to do would be to check his staus AFTER he's retired as we do with other Champions.
I agree 100% Larry Holmes, still an ATG, didn't have nearly the KO ratio and he fought in a weak era himself. He earned his status with quantity & longevity.
That's fine company to have your name mentiones with. If it was that easy of an accomplishment then everyone would be doing it, but they're not. If he wanted to Wlad could go on to dominate for another 5 years.
Doubt it. But I'm sure wlad is going to stick around after Vitali and scoop up the WBC. I know he wants all the belts. Adamek beating Vitali would make another huge fight but I can't see that happening. Next, Wlad should get a court order to force povetkin to fight him :nut
It took me a while to realise that it's not Wlad's fault the division sucks...dude is the best atm. I hope someone can step up (with some explosive power for my own enjoyment) and put up a good fight... It's also funny, I think back to when Holyfield had to prove himself worthy (because he wasn't really an explosive fight of the Tyson era), but damn Klitchskos are boring.
I have Wlad ranked in the top 20 will likely move him to the top 15 but I can't put him any higher, its not his fault but the losses in his prime, poor state of boxing, and most of all his brother really hurt his ranking for me.
Yeah dude...Holmes did suck. I mean, he was really just not a very good fighter, you know? He was pretty much a glorified ESPN club fighter :good
Yes, Holmes did fight some bums, but name me one fighter Wlad has beaten as champ who is the equal of or better than Ken Norton or Tim Witherspoon?