If this is what is being said, then yes he's definitely overrated. Look, he's a decent contender; he's got good speed and good power but he's not championship level quality. AJ losing to Ruiz, was like Lewis losing to Rahman and Tyson losing to Douglas. It was an anomaly. Sander's is just not on AJ or Wilder's level. One can argue that had it been Morrison in there with Rahman, instead of Sanders, Tommy would have pulled off the win.
The WBO wasn't taken seriously until the mid 2000s. Before that it was 3 belts and Mike Tyson, Buster Douglas, Evander Holyfield, Riddick Bowe and Lennox Lewis all held 3 belts including the lineal title at some point in their careers. No agenda whatsoever but the unification of the titles is considered a big thing last time I checked.
Are you aware that from roughly September 2012 until May 2014 the only active fighter with belts at heavyweight, and he had three of them, was named Wladimir Klitschko?
He then went on a TEN YEAR RUN OF DOMINANCE. Who else in the division's history can even claim that? Perhaps we should use a sample from that TEN YEAR RUN OF DOMINANCE as our standard of Prime Wlad rather than select fights that occurred before or after. Or is a TEN YEAR RUN OF DOMINANCE not a good enough sample size?
One could also argue that if Sanders hadn't had knee problems and had been able to spar and do roadwork, he'd have finished Rahman off himself.
The fact he wasn't good enough to to even compete with past prime Sanders proves how terrible that era he ruled over was. And its like not he blew through it spectacular fashion like any top H2H great would , no , he looked silly octopus grabbing his way through one non-athletic plodder after the other. We can see here his struggle with old Tony Thompson , note how he was out -landed on all 3 punch categories. https://boxrec.com/media/index.php/Wladimir_Klitschko_vs._Tony_Thompson_(1st_meeting) This proves without doubt that any Wlad would have been blown out by Sanders. . He blatantly avoided the rematch for good reason. You need to stack the deck with everything in Wlads favour just to give him a chance against Sanders. He has to be in his second or third wave of prime. He needs the services of a HOF trainer in his corner He had to be mid Steward Wlad , not early Steward Wlad. He needs his personal referee in Germany. He needs to be this , that and the other. Meanwhile Sanders can turn up past prime , semi retired , inactive and barely motivated and still walk away with a second round stoppage victory. This is reality. Reality states prime for prime Sanders wins more than Wlad.. Wlad won ZERO and ducked the rematch against what would have been an older and fatter Sanders.
While I agree Sanders was a stylistic nightmare for Wlad, Klitschko did not 'duck the rematch'. We've been over this. https://www.boxingforum24.com/threa...-other-way-round.583384/page-19#post-18456185
That's true. Dino keeps ducking my question. How many people Sanders age would you pick to beat Wlad? Name them. Obviously he put on a special performance.
I see him in that Rahman/Douglas band, but I'd say definitely worse than this two. He's overrated on here, and I think his all round skills are overrated in general. He was good; quick and powerful, but also quite craft. I think his defence, stamina and fundamentals were pretty bad though, and his chin was hardly granite. I'd definitely pick him over Morrison. I'd say he'd be in the mix in the 80s, with Dokes, Coetzee, Page, etc; which is a good level to be at, but nothing crazy. I think Brewster was better, to be honest. The casual audience may tend to dismiss him as a bum who beat Wladimir Klitschko, but I don't know. I tend not to interact with the people in comment sections. It hurts my head.
Both. Klitschko fanboys act as if he was some sort of amazing h2h monster that gives "anyone" the fight of their life. Klitschko haters act as if he just got lucky and would lost most matchups. The reality is he was inconsistent with his training and was indeed very talented, but in terms of what he actually accomplished he's above average at best. Despite fighting in a fairly weak era, he doesn't have many very good wins. In terms of h2h, he's also above average. Outside of icing a green Wladmir who sorely lacks durabliity to begin with, he doesn't have much. His 2nd best wins are journeymen Purrity and a still decent Bert Cooper. He lost to Rahman, and Bernard Hopkins' stunt double "Nate Tubbs" who accomplished absolutely nothing outside of that bout. Sanders' problem is that he simply wasn't active enough, taking long stretches of inactivity, getting out of shape, and rarely stepping up in class against actual name opponents. But on this forum we deal with what a boxer actually did, not what their potential is, which is a frequent problem when discussing legacy/h2h as people lack objectivity and conflate these issues. Kind of like how people prop Ike Ibeabuchi up based on 2 good wins.
It wasn't; just who Sanders beat, but also how quietly he beat them, He has 30 K's inside 3 rounds, and some of were vs names boxing fans should be familiar with. It wasn't his fault the press would use his name for Lewis, Tyson or Holyfield and he never got the chance to fight any of them. Sanders was close to fighting Roy Jones as well. Jones didn't want any part of it.
At what point was Sanders a worthy contender whom Lewis, Tyson, and Holyfield should have fought? From his debut in 91-93 his biggest win was the C level Bert Cooper. That didn't mean much to champion Holyfield who had already beaten a better version of Cooper and had bigger fish to fry like Big George, Bowe, etc. Then in 94 Sanders gets stopped by Nate "Nobody" Tubbs. Tyson was in jail. Lewis was on the rise and looking for his title shot after putting together impressive wins over Tucker, Bruno, and Ruddock. Sanders didn't offer much for Lewis' resume before the Tubbs loss, and offered absolutely nothing after the Tubbs loss. For the next 6 years, Sanders didn't do much outside of stopping an old Bobby Czyz who was overweight and coming off a 2 year layoff, decisioning the inconsistent journeyman Ross Purrity who had 10 losses (this was before he beat Wladmir). The rest of his wins were over mostly very mediocre guys with poor records who weren't ranked and had long stretches of inactivity. Then in 2000 he steps up against his best opponent in Hasim Rahman and loses. By this point, Tyson was completely washed up. Holyhfield was old and inconsistent and was struggling with Ruiz in a trilogy. Lewis was fat and old and looking for one last big payday. Sanders offered absolutely nothing to them, no belt, no name, no money. By the time Sanders managed to pull off a good win that made his name worth something against Wladmir in 2003, Lewis and Tyson had retired and Holyfield was completely shot getting his ass kicked by blown up light heavies James Toney and Chris Byrd. Even if for the sake of argument you think Holyfield should have fought him, Sanders proceeded to lose his belt in his very next fight against Vitali and never produced any good wins after that. The idea Sanders is some sort of victim who "never got his shot" against the big names like Tyson, Holyfield or Lewis is completely false. THe reality is he was inconsistent, often out of shape, took long periods of inactivity, and took a long time to step up. Even when he did step up, he often lost or had very mixed results over opponents who ranged from mediocre to good.