Still waiting for that quote. Holyfield's resume is good on the basis of his wins. He does, however, have a lot of losses whereas Vitali has only 2 on injury. Any resume can be pulled apart.
I'd also say that, for as long Corrie Sanders' stamina lasted, during his match with Vitali, he probably best demonstrated how easy it was to breach Vitali's defenses (Peter never did - no dynamism). We saw in the first couple of rounds of their fight how disorganized Vitali could be, when under attack. This is not necessarily due to the power of his opponent's offensive, but the speed at which it is initiated. Swift counters and, indeed any forward movement at pace could take Vitali by surprise. Holyfield had both speed of hand and foot, as well as inherent counter-punching ability. He's not going to have trouble scoring against Vitali.
So, Briggs has some names on his resume? He would have been a better win than Briggs in 1982-4 when he was still worth something. How is it that nobody can see Thomas is barely a step above garbage in 1986 and onward except me? You guys are embarrassing yourselves. You're trying to argue resume, while applying that in a H2H sense. This when its clear that the ACTUAL FOOTAGE proves my case. This content is protected If you want to continue with that sophistry, then I'll have to insist that you bow down to Briggs' historic and awesome win over George Foreman and we can take the resume battle to another level, where you pretend Thomas was still worth a bag of fries when he fought Tyson and Holy, and I'll pretend Briggs thrashed a good version of Foreman.
I rate Sanders very highly because I followed his career virtually from the start and knew what he was worth. I still believe to this day that if he'd been better managed, we'd be talking about him and not guys like Holyfield and Tyson. It did not surprise me to see him land his fast and accurate hands on Vitali. What did surprise me is that Vitali stayed vertical and that he managed to evade the worst of it for the rest of the fight. Vitali demonstrated an excellent sense of space when he made Sanders miss by a whisker, over and over, and then countered effectively. Holyfield is technically better than Sanders, but he's smaller and doesn't hit as hard or as fast. He would have to rely on a different approach to tackle Vitali.
The problem is your eye test doesn't work and Briggs proves that. Against unranked opposition he looks amazing, but put him in with a top ten opponent and he suddenly looks very very limited. If your ability to analyse footage was good enough to discount the quality of opposition, you would be able to be a very very rich man. Briggs faced exactly 4 people who were ranked in the top 10, Foreman, Lewis, Lyakhovic and Vitali. The most impressive he ever looked was in the first round against Lewis and the last against Lyakhovic. As I said, Briggs is the wrong argument to use here.
Come on, you rate Sanders highly only because he is a Vitali win. What has Sanders done other than his fluke win over Wlad?
Are we still talking Briggs here? This guy was shot to pieces when he faced Vitali. 50 year old Foreman beat him 13 years earlier!! Briggs was a semi-decent win for Lewis 12 years earlier!! By the time, he faced Vitali he was done. These Vitali fanboys here are unbelievable trying to hype up that average resume of Vitali. So I gotta agree with you here on Briggs
No, actually I don't. I've managed to collect a fairly large library of his fights, and when he was well prepared he was overwhelming.
Good of you to admit it. Thomas, against unranked opposition at that time, looked like he was barely better than them. Except for that the opponent we are talking about is the Thomas of that era and THAT Thomas was a spent cinder. Why ? "Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, This content is protected . He would defeat heroin and cocaine in 1989. The late-1980s saw him lose to Mike Tyson in 1987 and Evan Holyfield in 1988." https://blackthen.com/legends-ring-pinklon-thomas/ Bu ... bu ... but Thomas was top 10!!!!! Then the top 10 SUCKED BADLY. I wouldn't put a dime on that version of Thomas vs the version of Briggs Vitali fought.
Briggs was injured in the fight itself. If we follow that sort of logic, then we will end up anulling Vitali's losses to Byrd and Lewis.
Briggs in his prime got one of the biggest gifts in boxing history against a man old enough to be his father and Vitali fans are going on about how great he is lol.