Sonny Liston or Wladimir Klitschko who rates higher as a all time heavyweight?

You're arguing Wlad is the 4th best jabber in HW history. For that to be true there needs to be more examples of producing jabbing clinics than clinch clinics.
But unfortunately for you the latter is true. His illegal clinching was far a more dominant attribute than his jab.

Ali out jabbed many great jabbers enough time to overrule some of his clinch fests. 3 times he fought Frazier. The rubber he wasn't to hold. But he went in there to prove he could do it.
WK would never have fought Povetkin again under those conditions.

Ali Bashir said the goal in that fight was to win by whatever means necessary and then "look good in the next one"
They knew that wrestling performance was the only way he could beat Povetkin.

If Wlad like you say is top 4 greatest jabbers id history , why was Antony Joshua more effective with the jab against Pov?

Watch this video and see how Aj systematically broke Pov down with effective use of the jab to various points on Pov head and body.

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You will surely deny this reality by undermining Povetkins ability. But Wlad was drapped all over old Mormek , Thompson and shot to bits Sam Peter. At that point Pov was much better than these guys , so it goes without saying Pov would be back humped just the same.
But AJ never needed illegal tactics and displayed a much better use of the jab than Wlad did.

Furthermore , Pov was supercharged on PEDS during this time. If not in this fight , the peds he was on previously helped him stay in top condition.

 

Holmes signed for the unification fight with Coetzee but the fight was called off due to lack of funding.

 

You encounter all sorts of people on the internet.

 

While I agree, Dino's hatred the Klitschkos is..... extreme to say the least....... the very poster you're replying to, has a vendetta against 60s and especially 70s heavies for some odd reason. Whenever a thread on the aforementioned heavies is posted, (especially Foreman), he'll come out of the woodworks to take snipes from the sidelines, while trying to portray objectivity for subjects he very obviously detests. What a sad sad man.

 

You're all over the ****ing place. First, you questioned the milage Liston should get from knocking Wepner's teeth out while seemingly accepting the underlying premise (and manufacturing a strawman in the process "Well Wlad's still more proven than Liston in power lolz" even though the poster you quoted didn't mention Wlad at all nor have a horse in this thread)

Now you're questioning the validity of the report altogether, and think the boxing commission, as well as Bethea's manager conspired to lie for some reason.

I suppose the dentist who removed several of Bethea's loose teeth for fear that he'd swallow them in his sleep, was in on the take as well.

 

Nobody's triggered. Your pathetic gaslighting attempts won't work here. I'm actually proud of you for finding the resolve to bring up Foreman only once in a thread that has nothing to do with him. Maybe there is hope for you after all to get out of your parasocial relationship.

 

I did not intend to make this a thread about Wlad but since we're here now.

I do not understand the vitriolic emotions in this thread. Wlad's a good champ I have no problem admitting why folks rate him highly.

That said, if my motive is to rip into what youse call criteria I'd say to you, you are as inconsistent and hypocritical as those who came before you.

You guys talk about things like resume while citing things like feats and performances as if Wlad has any of that.

Lineal seems to have some level of importance despite his lineage being him alone and without fighting the clear second placer during his time as champion, because that's his brother.

Time as champion seems super duper important, except, according to you lot Wlad's belts don't matter. Convenient then, youse cite a time frame as champion clearly marked by when he won a body belt. Not his lineal, ring, or any other alt title. 09-15 is 6 years buds. I've seen no one claim Wlad's time as champion begins when he became anything but a sanctioned champion.



What makes Wlad a great champion is his time in office while holding down 1/2 the world's mandos. You know it's true, it's damn true. It is the exceptional thing about him.

His size is not special. His style is literally amateur, I know youse claim it's euro, but no, his trainer did not hide it. Wlad sticks to a basic amateur style that focuses on sound fundamentals. Plenty respectable but nothing special. The only real stand outs during his time were his brother, the twilight years of marked careers, and a few lower weight step ups. The only thing special there is brothers tag teaming the division.

The exceptional thing about Wladimir Klitschko's career is his time as a HW champion and it is absolutely vital you recognize the bodies as what they are and mandos as what they are for this exceptionalism to be true.


Finally, to wrap this up nicely, your emotional responses show your hand more than any logical fallacy you present. The fact you have such emotion tied to the topic and take anything perceived as criticism for Wlad as criticism for yourself while being entirely hypocritical about anything you claim have value really just says Wlad's career gives you feels more than most and you'd fight tooth and nail to protect them.

 

Welcome to Classic.

 

He fought 2 second place guys (1 actually a first place) before Vitali came back and 2 second place guys after Vitali's last fight. Wlad reigned for almost 10 years as a title holder and Vitali was only active for 4 of those. It's not even a majority of his reign. So yeah, he didn't fight his brother for obvious reasons, but he beat every other top contender there was.

Yeah, but he won the IBF belt while beating the current number 1 HW in the world, which was Chris Byrd. Belts are not that important, but they can be a part of the story. For example: Wlad was the first and only unified champion in the division from 2002 when Lewis vacated the IBF belt until 2015 when Fury beat him. That tells us he never had problems with unifing. But even if we only take his time as the champion since June 2009, he defended the lineal title 11 times, which is 4th longest consecutive stretch in the history of the heavyweight division and 5th overall when it comes to the sole number of defences.

3/4 world's mandos. You can say IBF & WBO are a part of the original WBA all you want, but the reality is, they are 3 seperate sanctioning bodies, with their own rankings and enforcing their own fights, so managing 3 mandos instead of 1 is way harder.

 

Complicating the picture a bit further, lots of people -- once the apparent majority -- thought Vitali would've beaten Wlad.

That said, the broad thrust of what his defenders are saying is basically correct, IMO.

 

As to ring: Sure it is. Ring isn't held by the standard of if their rated fighters do well. They are held by the standard of placing of the popular and rated fighters into one rating by cutting the unpopular names found in four different body ratings.


There is nothing wrong, per-se, with the whose the best at a given time. Figg crowns champions during the era in which most recognize him as champion. Those names do not often make lists because historians feel Figg was still the best man with the best claim to superiority. Regardless of him crowning a few different men a champion of england.

Likewise, man-who-beat-the-man isn't always the best man around and sometimes a champion, the man, ages out while holding the title ransom. I do not mean this hyperbolically, Jem Ward did it in the 1830s or about a handful of times.

Man who beat the man has the same issue running backwards. It is hard as a "best during their era" debater to argue against man who beat the champion. Likewise as a champ who beat the champ proponent it is hard to argue against clear instances where that man and the best man during the era are two different men. Hard to place Big G on top when Tyson, Lewis, Bowe, Holy and Moore are abouts. Seems like consensus on man who beat the man is Foreman in 96. Mikes were champions.

 

I understand boxing debates get heated, but let's look at this objectively. My defense of Wlad has consistently been about highlighting his actual accomplishments while pointing out the double standard in how he's criticized. Many fighters throughout history have had similar stylistic "flaws" or resume gaps, yet don't face anywhere near the same level of scrutiny.

The criticism about Wlad not being undisputed is particularly weak when examined closely. The heavyweight division has rarely had undisputed champions over the last few decades - it's more exception than rule. Judging Wlad primarily on this technicality rather than his decade-plus domination, title defenses, and wins over multiple generations of contenders misses the forest for the trees.

What's interesting is how this conversation focuses entirely on "Wlad defenders" while ignoring the much larger contingent who consistently try to diminish his achievements. For a fighter who dominated for so long, won multiple titles, and dispatched virtually everyone put in front of him (often in devastating fashion), the resistance to acknowledging his greatness is telling.

The undisputed argument is ultimately just semantics that doesn't meaningfully change what Wlad accomplished in the ring. Boxing history will remember who he beat and how he beat them far more than whether he collected every alphabet belt simultaneously. Those are the tangible achievements that truly define a champion's legacy.