The right style to beat a prime Wladimir Klitschko?

A short banger could have some success I feel, but he'd have to have the right combination of mental and physical tools to make it work. He'd have to walk that delicate balance between being close enough to land his own punches, but not so close that he's tied up easily inside. Quite tricky.

Sam Peter in the second fight tried to implement some bob and weave, but he was hoplelessly too slow moving in. Wlad had no problems whatsoever shifting backwards and keeping the distance, and pot-shotting Peter to death. Very demoralising for the big Nigerian.

Now perhaps a fighter with Joe Frazier's closing speed and ability to get in really low under a good deal of Wlad's punches could be a different story. He'd have to be prepared to take punches to land punches, and be very mindful of Wlad's ability to tie up inside. He'd have to dish out some dirty stuff, and try and take Wlad out of that comfort zone.
Wlad is not offensive-minded when retreating, and maybe a tenacious guy with fast closing speed could put him more on the defensive than he'd like to be.
I don't think that Wlad is at all interested in getting into a give and take type of fight. It's not in his mentality, and perhaps an opponent that has him constantly backing up, or backing up more than he'd like and not getting into a rythmn to set up his own offense, could have success.

 

But to finish him, you need to land. That's been a problem for the vast majority of his opponents.

 

Yeah, very much agreed. He's extremely mindful of his own vulnerabilities, and that's a credit to him. A lot of fighters are either incapable of adjustiing or too stubborn and set in their ways to fully learn from their mistakes.

He's a bit of a strange one. To me, and if I read your post correctly, to you too, he is fairly average in many respects, but extremely good at what he needs to be good at.

One has to wonder if he's either a woefully underappreciated fighter or a good but not great fighter that has taken advantage of a really poor era. Maybe somewhere in between those two extremes.

 

It is hard...it's just something I like to think about, because it's a problem that all of his opponents have had trouble with. I like to try and work out exactly how, from a technical point of view, a fighter deals with his dimensions and movement.

I tend to agree with your take on Lewis. Simply put, Lewis is as big as Wlad and technically very good, and that in itself creates problems Wlad has rarely had to deal with.
But also, the two losses Lewis suffered were due to big right hands, and Wlad has that. Interesting fight.