Yeah, I was really waiting for that "fight" once Stiverne became mandatory. Would have been so funny.
Even the actual version of Vitali would have probably managed to get a victory, if not a stoppage. "Dehydrated"... what the ****.
Vitali ducked Stiverne for a year. Before that he looked woeful, gassed out after 4 rounds, and had the fight pre maturely stopped against complete bum Charr. Before that he was grinded down by Chisora. And in-between all that he also ducked Haye. Nothing to suggest he would have beaten a more prime Stiverne
Agreed, during the Wilder fight I was thinking, how could anyone say Vitali was ducking this limited Stiverne? I would rather say he was lucky for not facing Vitali.
I believe that Stiverne still stands a chance against Wlad. It is a fight that may very welll happen in the near future. At 38, Wlad would be much more stationary than the mobile Wilder.
I would not call him limited , he just has to be more busy. The key mistake Stiverne was that he was head hunting too much. Wilder had a better defense than anticipated. Srtiverne should have concentrated on the body more
Yes he would have clearly beaten Stiverne and Wilder as well. But he had other concerns at the time which prevented the fight. He should have relinquished the title far earlier though, it kind of tarnished the end of his career by stalling the fight for so long only to give the belt up before finally being stripped.
Even if so, I still think Vitali would have put Stiverne away if they had met. Wilder still did a good job last weekend.
Stiverne would have made Vitali work, just like Chisora did. The man was old, nothing would have been easy.