Thoughts on Pulev?

This. He is a good athlete and does have a decent jab, but is very rigid and has no adaptability. Wlad landed left hook after left hook at will on Pulev. Parker and Pulev would be an interesting fight.

 

delete

 

Yeah he is overrated. His movement is poor, he has no inside game and that's meant he's developed into a jab and grabber.

But he is effective with that style but against the very top guys he'll always come up short

 

Maybe, but the top guys are not all that great themselves. He might pick up some alphabet strap with a little bit of luck but I don't see him doing much.

 

He would be the favorite against Wilder.

 

He won't beat any of the current belt holders. Joshua would walk right through him.

He doesn't hit hard enough to beat Wilder and Wilder's speed and power would see him eventually blow him away.

Parker's speed would be problematic for Pulev. Jab and grab doesn't work if you can't get off first. And Pulev doesn't push you back or force you to chase him, he'd be right in front of Parker for the whole fight which would see Parker have a lot of success.

Maybe he could pick up the WBA regular belt but as long as the current fighters are holding the other belts Pulev isn't winning anything.

 

The biggest thing that stands out about Pulev to me is the brilliance of his promoter's match making early in his career. While too many guys feast on straight bums for the first 15/20 fights, Pulev swiftly moved up to fighting relatively dangerous guys like Skelton and Walker fairly early.

 

He used to be a very legit threat.

Now though he's a shadow of his former self. The Wlad fight broke his confidence and he's terrified of a repeat performance. Even at his peak (Dimitrenko, Ustinov, Thompson) he never really bothered to develop his infighting or general technical skills but he at least had the speed and footwork to stay out of trouble, plus the moxy to fight himself out of tough situations. Ustinov managed to corner him several times and Pulev just exploded like a savage and fought his way out.

Now that he's older and slower he's adopted a disgusting clinch game in the style of Wlad to stymie his opponents' inside work, which works against shorter opponents like Chisora but would see him destroyed against taller more nimble guys like Parker and Wilder. He's also not really good enough on the outside to make that work, the way Wlad did for years, so he's more or less just a slightly above average jab and grabber with little power and no infighting ability.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see Ustinov give him all he could handle nowadays.

 

Still a fully fledged top 10 guy and better than anyone on Wilder's resume.

 

Well his jab is awesome and he knows how to use it. He is for sure a top10 contender.

 

Pulev has always been shyte.

 

He'd probably beat Wilder and Parker.

 

He has fought his way into mandatory positions and then not took on the challenge of the champion. That says everything i need to know about Pulev.