Vitali Klitschko Is Overrated

I guess most would not rank him in the Top 10. His fight against an aging and overweight Lewis is overrated and otherwise his resume simply is not that good. He was very dominant in his wins I give him that.

 

Short and accurate. Fully support your opinion.

 

There isn't a man vitali beat that Joe Joyce couldnt beat.

 

Vitali fought three good opponents, and the narrative is that he fluked his losses against Byrd and to a lesser degree, Lewis. In reality, against Lewis, the tide was turning towards Lewis' favour. The idea that if it had carried on, Vitali would've won is unfounded. If anything, I think what would've happened is he would've become a sitting duck and gotten legitimately stopped. That loss, if anything, did more for his image than ANY of his wins.

The loss to Byrd is also portrayed as a freak incident, in a fight Vitali was dominating and got taken out by an injury which forced him to stop. But again, this is not the truth. He was not dominating. If anything, he was barely winning. I've scored it a few times and the best I can see for Vitali at the end of the ninth is being up 5-4. A fight where the guy who lands eight more punches, but needed to throw almost double the amount to do so, is not dominating. And an injury, caused by missing an opponent, which is not an isolated incident - Holyfield also suffered a similar injury - is not a freak occurrence. The only major difference between Holy and Vitali, is that Vitali quit. Well, other than the fact Vitali was in his prime and 30lbs heavier than Byrd while Holyfield wasn't.

Both of these losses should be seen as direct marks on Vitali's ability to beat elite fighters, since they're the only two he fought and he lost to both them. It should still be noted that Vitali didn't disgrace himself in either. He showed he was good enough to hang with an older Lewis, and he was arguably in the lead against Byrd. But does that sound like the best heavyweight ever? Or even, a great heavyweight? No, not IMO. Ranking him as such, is overrating him in my book.

 

The way he handled Sam Peter in his comeback was impressive i'll admit that but other than that yes he was is very overrated.

 

His surmised ability in head to head fights may be better than what his actual resume reflects. At the moment I kinda feel the same way about Tyson Fury

 

I agree that his resume is nothing special, but I also think that he was very unlucky.

He sustained a near career ending injury, that kept him out of the ring from 2004 to 2008.

These are the years when his legacy should have been built, and they were denied to him.

I am normally very critical of people building impressive looking heavyweights, with paper thin resumes, up into hypothetical head to head monsters.

However Vitally Klitschko is kind of exception that proves the rule.

 

He is both overrated and underrated due to things that were his fault and things that weren't his fault. His injuries that sidelined him for several years of his prime were not his fault. The fact that the best elite HW opponent was his own brother for much of his career was also not his fault and nobody could really expect them to fight. However, Vitali did get a handful of opportunities to face some decent elite fighters and came up short, but did well in both fights.

He was the epitome of a quantity over quality type of champion, although even some of his best opponents just weren't all that great. He looked impressive dominating guys like Peter, Arreola, and Chisora, but they weren't exactly household names nor were they the best the division could offer. Seriously, these guys fought like they had cement shoes and consistently blocked with their face. Vitali should have made more of an effort to seek out the best guys available and it didn't always seem as if he made that a priority even when he was healthy.

In terms of legacy, he's a fringe ATG, maybe top 15-20 or so. He's in a similar position to guys like Norton, Bowe, Bruno, etc if we're being brutally honest. H2H is trickier because it's not only subjective, but he simply lacks the big wins to pick him with confidence over other ATGs. His statistics such as rarely losing rounds, not being floored, his high volume, etc are impressive on paper but again, he built those statistics over mostly mediocre opponents. I'm fairly certain that there are quite a few other HW's who could match or exceed those statistics against those opponents so you have to take the data with a grain of salt.

 

Haha he's my third favorite boxer after BHop and Qawi.

 

Just for some context , he had his last fight Dec 2004 against Danny Williams and he un-retired Jan 2007 , only two years later. He tried to get Oleg in 07 but Peter was given the shot before him. So he was ring ready for two out of those 4 years.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2007/jan/25/boxing.gdnsport3