He didn't but if Klitschko actually had any sense he would have. He had a gassed Joshua right for the taking and he didn't really press the issue. Thats why i think if Klitschko wasn't 41 and had Emmanuel Steward yelling in his ear to let his hands go he would have 100% beaten Joshua. Too bad Klitschko was an idiot that night.
Which is why i said he was an idiot that night. I don't take that specific performance away from Joshua. He beat Klitschko, but i wouldn't favor Joshua to beat a prime Klitschko
I think he didn't want to finish him. He likes and respects Joshua and sees him as his successor. Joshua was totally corpse and vulnerable. Clinchko never been an idiot.
He wasn't an "idiot that night", that's just him as a fighter. If anything that's more on Wlad's boxing IQ rather then his physical body out of prime. Regardless, I agree with you on a prime Wlad v Joshua is no where near the same fight.
This is just dumb, you're basically saying "he didn't want to win". It's clear this was Wlads last effort to put on the gloves and he just missed the chance, nothing more. Not some "he respected Joshua so he didn't wanna knock him out".
Sounds like dumb but that's the only true reason imo. Wlad was old guy and he didn't wanna ruin AJ's career. He probably thought his young days and emphatize with him.
I don't understand why you guys are so surprised. That's the only explanation for not attacking a vulnerable corpse. Wlad earned his money for the last time and showed his potential. Win-win.
Misplaced source of motivation. Team Usyk said the other day that Wlad hasn’t contacted him even once in the lead up to this fight. Given Wlad’s friendship with AJ he’s most likely giving AJ advice on how to beat Usyk.
He said to AJ after the fight "the better you do, the better I do" and he must have known that finishing AJ would have severely damaged AJ's long-term legacy and possibly his confidence too. As it was Wlad showed that a younger, active, champion version of himself would have won the fight and he allowed AJ to go on to potentially become an ATG and avenge Wlad's loss to Fury. The other theory (which I subscribe to, though it's still hard to comprehend) is that Wlad thought that AJ was finished and didn't want to risk gassing or getting countered when going for the KO. This is consistent with Wlad's tentativeness against much smaller, less powerful HW's like Chambers and Ibragimov and consistent with the post-fight interviews of him and his brother.