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George it's not often I disagree with you but I have to say I thought Bivol did considerably better in the 2nd fight.

For me the 2nd fight was a repeat of the 1st fight without Beterbiev's strong finish. I thought Bivol pretty much controlled the fight after the 6th round and I only gave Beterbiev 1 round in the 2nd half of fight which was the 12th.

But I do agree that Bivol has been clearly the better fighter over the 2 fights and I'm of the opinion that a 3rd fight isn't needed because for me Bivol has proved he's the better man IMO.

 

I am due a rewatch of Beterbiev Bivol 1. I had Beterbiev winning the first fight but yeah I agree it's hard not to give Bivol the 2nd.

I think it was pretty much 7-5 in both cases. I don't think a 3rd is needed because I am getting tired of trilogies but if there was one I wouldn't mind as much it would be that.

I am still not completely convinced a third fight won't happen.

 

So GGG beat the greatest Mexican fighter of all time twice and is still overrated?

 

He posted the prescription bottles online along with a picture of himself with the doctor. He has team were stupid for not making sure it was cleared before his fight, but there’s a reason he was cleared.

Yes, Ortizx 2 and Furyx2 (before losing) is better than fighting Dillianabol Whyte.

Go picket in front of the WBC offices. See if they care. The Ring has no mandatories btw.

 

I thought so as well, or at least that it couldda gone either way.

 

What did Breazeale do to become the mandatory over Whyte then?

The Ring forces you to fight a Top 5 contender every 2 years, otherwise they are stripping you of the belt. That's not mandatory, but at least it forces you to fight top competition.

 

Yes
Canelo was pre prime and Mexico isnt so great when it comes to their top level of boxing in comparison to the USA and Russia/Ukraine

 

His team was stupid, but clever enough to fool some people, apparently. Levels, I guess.

 

Has The Ring changed its policy? Tyson Fury stayed near the top year after year even after testing positive for steroids and retiring. I’m not saying the sanctioning bodies are perfect, but I am saying that they try to follow rules and that that the fighters are seeking their belts more than “lineal” or Ring. The sanctioning body belts actually increase the purses of fighters who aren’t huge draws.

“Why is Dillian Whyte not mandatory for Deontay Wilder? Dominic Breazeale fight explanation
Many fans are confused by the WBC situation

• By Michael Benson

• Published: 13:13, 7 Mar 2019
• Updated: 13:19, 7 Mar 2019

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Deontay Wilder has been ordered to make the next defence of his WBC heavyweight title against mandatory challenger Dominic Breazeale.
The sanctioning body made this ruling on Wednesday, with no mention of what it means for Britain’s Dillian Whyte – who had previously been ordered to fight Breazeale himself.
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This situation stems back two-and-a-half years and is explained in full below.
opted out of the Wilder rematch.
Therefore, the WBC have now scrapped the Breazeale vs Whyte ‘interim’ title fight and instead ordered Wilder to face Breazeale next – as he was mandatory to begin with.
This is a disappointing situation for Whyte because he is now left out in the cold, waiting for the next WBC mandatory opportunity to come around, unless he pursues another route.
“

 

Summary: the WBC deems their #4 contender "first mandatory", granting their #1 contender and silver champion the chance to fight for "second mandatory" and a vacant interim belt.

 

You left out the part about Hearn and Whyte trying to become mandatory without fighting a PBC fighter (again).

 

I misstated my intent earlier: What I meant was, arguably the best three wins by a singular fighter in boxing history. Absolutely without question the best three wins over the same foe by any singular fighter in boxing history. Most people say Pep is No. 1 all-time at featherweight, and Sandy beat a championship-caliber version of Pep three times with none of them even going the distance. Willie’s one win in the series stands as solid proof that he was not some faded version like Matthew Saad Muhammad or Ezzard past his championship years.

This isn’t aimed as a slam at you @Greg Price99 btw: I appreciate you bringing up the condition/status of Willie Pep at the times he fought Sandy Saddler. I think close examination exposes some of the Pep legend as myth rather than fact.

From the time Willie Pep was in a plane crash on Jan. 5, 1947, through mid-1952 — at which point he lost to Tommy Collins — Willie had 59 fights with 56 wins. All three losses were to Saddler.

No less than nine of those fights were featherweight world title bouts (including the four Saddler fights) and he won all of those apart from three losses to Sandy. His level of activity (as in frequency of fights and ratio of title fights to non-title bouts) is on part with his fight schedule before the plane crash. He took off six months after the crash, for sure, but after that it was basically business as usual.

Let’s talk about that plane crash. Yes, people died. Yes, Willie was injured. The New York Times reported this: “Among those injured was William Papaleo (Willie Pep), world champion featherweight boxer, who suffered ankle and chest injuries, but whose athletic career is not expected to be affected by the injuries.”

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Willie claims he broke his back and leg and was told he’d never fight again. If he did break his back, it is a 100% certainty that he did not sever his spine — if that had occurred, he would have died or been paralyzed. What may have happened, if indeed there was a spinal fracture at all, was a transverse process fracture — the bony ‘spike’ of the spine on a vertebrae getting cracked. It’s damned sure painful but it’s not an injury which is debilitating.

The wrestler Ric Flair broke his back in a plane crash in 1975 and was considered to be the best or among the best in the world still 20 years later and was still good enough to pull off a high-level WrestleMania match in 2008.

NFL quarterbacks Tony Romo, Cam Newton and Bo Nix all played with transverse process fractures — they did not even take six months off.

None of this is to take away from Willie’s toughness nor his dedication in going forward after the plane crash. But some people wish to act as if he was pushed to the ring in a wheelchair against Saddler or fighting in an iron lung, which is simply not the case. He was world featherweight champion and there wasn’t a peep about ‘omg this guy is a half-cripple’ in any contemporary account of this time. It’s much more ‘he lost, so he must not have been good anymore,’ and that flies in the face of the evidence.

Willie was a 3-1 favorite over Saddler in their first go. I have seen zero contemporary articles suggesting Pep was shot or even beginning to show decline. Sandy iced him clean in four rounds.

After the third loss to Saddler, Willie started campaigning pretty much full-time around 130 pounds. After the Collins fight you cited, he won 19 fights in a row before a KO loss to Lulu Perez. So counting the four fights before the Collins bout (and the Collins fight itself), up to Lulu Perez he went 79-5 after the plane crash with three of those defeats — the only three at featherweight, his natural and best weight — coming vs Saddler.

(Has there ever been a sports injury that only hampered the athlete against one particular opponent — like a baseball pitcher with an arm injury that only stopped him pitching well against the Yankees, or a running back with a leg injury that only kept him from running well against the 49ers?)

It should be noted that there were accusations that Pep threw both the Collins and Perez fights, the latter of which I think there’s general agreement that this is what happened. The Collins one is more iffy, perhaps shock that someone other than Sandy could take out Willie (even at a higher weight).

Furthermore, if Pep was shot, why was he ranked No. 1 going into the Perez bout? Who was saying he was toast at the time? (The dive evidence in that bout backed by odds swinging from fourth-ranked Perez being a narrow favorite to shooting up as high as 3 1/2-to-1 on fight day and most bookies taking it off the board. Specifics of the fix being reported some years later by Sport magazine that Pep took $16K to lose the fight.)

Specific to the Pep of the fourth Saddler fight, he had reeled off eight wins I think after losing the third go including a win over top-10 lightweight Eddie Chavez while weighing 127. How is that evidence of Willie being shot?

Also, in discussing Pep’s KO losses to Lulu and Collins, funny that (dive accusations aside) so many will dismiss every loss by Razor Ruddock after Mike Tyson (including getting destroyed by Lennox Lewis) with ‘meh, Mike ruined him’ but no one entertains the idea that maybe Sandy ruined Willie much more than the plane crash did (there is at least evidence in his record that he wasn’t the same after those four bouts; not so from the plane crash).

 

Why did Whyte specifically have to fight a PBC fighter? Whyte fought Parker and Chisora in that time period. Ortiz' most significant win was against Jennings. Breazeale's was Molina. Fury hadn't had a big fight in years going into the first Wilder fight. All of them were rated below Whyte in the WBC rankings, if I remember correctly.

 

Parker was/is a WBO guy and Chisora wasn’t exactly a top contender. I spelled it out for you and you don’t like it. The WBC ranked PBC and Hearn fighters, but Hearn tried to skip fighting them.

 

Dillian turned down final eliminators vs Fury, Pulev and Ortiz, right?

He wanted to play, but he wouldn’t get in the sandbox.