His legacy was knocking out blown up cruiserweights while enjoy huge height and reach advantages. It was not his fault that the HW division was weak and all the big men are playing in the NFL. His jab and grab style was dreadful but effective against the smaller journeymen type fighters.
No as his legacy is not really that strong No as he should not be rated alongside those you mentioned in the opening post
No Wlad has made his mark at HW, whatever happens from here. Just look at the current top 10 and how many Wlad has beaten or that in Wlads 6 fights leading up to Fury he had taken the 0 of 5 different fighters
Povetkin, Chagaev, Haye, Byrd, Mercer, Botha, Brewster, Peter, McCline, Ibragimov, Rahman, Chambers, Pulev there are more and he has reigned for a long time with many defences. Thats a fair legacy
He has created a decent ATG legacy and none of it goes undone by losing to Fury at the age of 39! With that said, Wlad showed that he struggled when facing a fighter just as big as him, this cannot be denied..so it does put an extra ceiling onto his greatness.
I agree it's a decent legacy to leave behind. It's a shame he doesn't have Valuev on there and many will now be suspicious of that fight having not happened with him being beaten by a bigger man. H2H I think it's safe to say he would never have been able to hang with Lewis at any point of his career with LL's similar size and reach advantage.
He had scr@ped a 10 on my all-time list, so I did not have him up with that list. A couple more years with four or five more defences would have moved him up a few notches, overtaking Frazier, Tyson and maybe one or two more. At this point, and given his age, I still have him (barely) in my top ten. I'll need a year or two after he retires for keeps to properly assess his legacy.
Nearly cleaned out another generation of contenders- there's no shame in a young hungry fighter having your number eventually. If it was that easy, someone over the last decade would've cracked the code. Full credit to Fury for the win!
No, it shouldn't affect it. He lost to a HUGE, young, very motivated guy, while he himself was at an advanced age.