Its normal if Vitali and Johnson are on the same level , otherwise its not normal to be missing that amount of punches on a heavy bag like Johnson.
Roy Jones didn't suck , remember how dominant he was? You should delete that post i think. It was really stupid.
Johnson's a spoiler. This was a miserable defence, but "punchbag" is hardly a valid description. If anything, the problem was in the other direction, inactivity, overly cautious etc. He just didn't throw anything himself, but if there's some notion that people should be landing over 40% on Johnson, I think that's inaccurate.
Fury pelted him with feather dusters all night long. Joshua punched right threw him ending the fight in under two rounds ..literally couldn't miss. Vitali has no hooks or short punches in close. Thats why Johnson was able to flick his 1-2s off his shoulders. The issue was with Vitali , not Johnson. Joshua showed how easy it was to take Johnson out. And AJ was just a novice with 12 pro fight at the time.
Did he have any great fights in his prime? No. He didn't. The best fight Jones was in was Tarver 1...
Yeah, Fury is a precision boxer, Vitali is a volume puncher. Precision punchers will always have a better connect rate than volume punchers. I just don't think you can persuade me that 30% land rate (if that's what it is) is some ghastly failure. Huge returns just don't tend to happen, even in technical mis-matches. The exceptions tend to be in past-prime contests where a fighter is far-gone and fades badly but is still tough. Maybe somebody can show me otherwise, but it seems well within normal parameters to me.
You can see Vitali giving all the great heavyweight's a problem, however, these 'stats' we hear about, the connect percentage, rounds won, are built from weak foundations. Competition is king. The luxury of having a younger brother flatten contenders is not one most heavyweight greats have enjoyed. Had there only been one, and Vitali was dominant, my guess is there would still be this feeling of lack. The heavyweight division had a sophomore vibe when Lewis retired. Like Tunney and The Rock, it's never good when the king retires with his crown.
30% connect rate is well within normal , true. But throwing over thousand punches isn't. The punch count is what im looking at. He could have thrown 200-300 less hits and still achieved a 30% connect rate. Throwing over 1000 shots at Johnson and only landing 300 of them isn't an impressive stat. Its pretty poor when you actually watch the fight and see that Kingping was standing right in front of him for the entire fight. I also believe Johnson had only the use of one hand in the contest which only adds further insult to injury.
Vitali had trouble against slicksters. It showed up against Kingpin and Byrd. Vitali also ducked James Toney.
My reasoning is this: Wlad held 2-3 belts over this period, so he was the more tempting target. Also the mandatories from all of Wlad's belts, would have gravitated towards his orbit. This would have significantly limited Vitally's options for opponents. The fact that he was never going to hold any belt except the WBC, would have minimized the rewards of taking dangerous opponents, who were not ranked highly by the WBC. What Vitally should have done, is pick up the phone to Chris Byrd, the day after he won the WBC and Ring titles from Sanders!
This doesn't scan at all. In the period in which Vitali matched Charr, Chisora, Briggs, Sosnowski and Johnson, Wladimir matched Tony Thompson, Jean Mormeck, Sam Peter and David Haye. So he could't have fought Haye. Except he could have fought Haye.
Why would Haye fight Vitally for the WBC, when he could fight Wlad for the WBO, IBF, and Ring belts? Why would any of them fight Vitally for less reward?
