I would say Fury's and AJ's wins over old Wlad are some of the most overrated wins in recent boxing history. Especially now when there's sparring footage of Wlad being outboxed easily by Oleg Pryimachov, a muay thai fighter with 0 pro boxing experience. In the video Wlad looks super slow like old George, has 0 reflexes and eats every jab coming from Oleg. He looks like he has nothing left. He was pretty much a corpse around 2016.
It pains me to say this, but yes, Wlad was very old and slow and at the end of his era. If it was not Fury, then it would have been any other fighter very soon after that.
Of course Wlad was well past his prime. The version of Wlad that fought Fury was 2 yers older than the version of Lewis that fough Vitali. Plus Wlad had 24 more fights (and 24 more hard training camps) comparing to Lewis and he took a lot of punishment in his losses unlike Lewis who was knocked out twice by one punch in the fights he was winning easily. So yes, if Lewis at 37 after 43 fights and 14-years-long career was past his prime against Vitali then Wlad at 39 after 67 fights and 19-years-long career was clearly more washed up than Lennox was against Vitali.
in the fury fight, wlad was not mentally prepared. people forget that his wife was having health issues with her pregnancy. yet, it still showed that his physical attributes were assuredly in the decline. he did rally for as much as he could against a.j. and it did show. was a pretty good fight. knocking him down. great fighters can have one last fight in them. and that was it for wlad. i really hope he stays retired.
He wasnt and he still isnt. If he came back today he would be the 3rd best Heavy in the game. Only AJ and Fury beat him. Or are we still playing the Wlad is an old man, Povetkin is an old man, Ortiz is a monster in his peark game?
You'd have to redefine 'shot'. He was diminished, but still a very skilful, hard hitting and dangerous opponent. Fury's approach showed him to have become quite a one dimensional fighter, perhaps a level of complacency had set in after all those succesful defences. When he fought Joshua he was more aggressive and AJ's style was more conducive to allowing him to show what he still had in the locker.
He was shot to ****. Which is why he retired. Wlad was shot against Jennings too, but Jennings was so bad he couldn’t even capitalized on it.
Well he was still the champ when fury beat him however he was over the hill inactive & no champ when roid boy paid him off
He was shot. I was at the Jennings fight and could see how badly his reflexes had diminished. To his credit he remained in top shape which obviously helped him. But prime Wlad erases both Fury and Joshua.
