It's time to finally appreciate Wlad's class as the champion

So, only 2 as I said. Arreola and Adamek. Gomez was on the level of Ray Austin and Briggs was washed up.

 

Just like he avenged his brother's loss to Byrd.

He rematched him when Brewster wanted to take the rematch.

Source?

You fight as the ref let's you. If your tactics work and the ref isn't warning you, why would you change how you fight? And Povetkin was clinching almost as much as Wlad in this fight.

That's just Fury's mindgames.

 

The guy who padded canvases and threw headbutts at Fury?

Classless, midget clincher and pusher who didn't congratulate Fury when he won. BUM.

 

Looking at the fact that Fury threw elbows at opponents and clinched Wilder to death and he himself looked for excuses of to why Usyk beat him (war in Ukraine) and still claims he won, Wlad couldn't headbutt a better guy.

 

Don't mind abit of dirty tactics but literally grabbing hold and pushing people over getting knockdowns called because the refs were either bought or incompetent is pathetic. Povetkin fight was a farce Wlad was a one dimensional bum dosser who faltered the moment a decent man his own size fought him AJ included who is mediocre.

In the words of Fury, "you struggled with Tony Thompson for christ sake how will you handle me? You won't" and he didn't.

I agree Furys handling of is first Usyk loss was poor, big ego meets a knock.

 

Fury ducked the rematch with this "one dimensional bum dosser" cause he was scared the fight was a fluke, lol. He also is a PED cheat. So you're barking at a wrong tree here. And Wlad fought AJ when he was 41. Come back here when Fury will fight the best heavyweight in the world when he's 41.

 

This is 100% true even though Wlad's time did have a few problems in its own to be completely fair.

 

I respect you as a poster, and your post. Though I don’t agree with all of it. I definitely think Wlad should be commended for his longevity, for bouncing back from catastrophe and, as you say, for taking on those tough up-and-coming challengers when he was older.However, I think the quality of his reign was generally poor. Not his fault, granted. But only offset to a degree by the length of his reign. And some of the tactics in those performances were very questionable. As for the Lewis claim, I don’t agree that he ducked Byrd. There was literally no clamour for that fight. And, to be fair, Lewis did then go on to fight a greater threat in Vitali. I do not have Wlad in my personal HW top 10.

 

That's what mandatories are for - to give the boxers, who maybe aren't that popular but are deserving, a shot at the crown. And yes, Lewis ultimately fought Vitali, which is very commendable, but it was after he tried to get a rematch with Mike Tyson, and after Kirk Johnson pulled out. He didn't drop the belt to fight him, it just turned out that way. At the time tho, Byrd was rated higher than Vitali and held a victory over him.

 

All that is true. Though Vitali, in fairness, was considered a greater threat than Byrd at the time who was, and still is to some degree, seen as a beneficiary of in injury win.

 

Vitali's reputation was very low at the time, with peole calling him Quitchko or Bitchko. Not many people gave him a chance to win. He made 180 with his Lewis performance after which it seemed like whole world began to love him.

There was even a column in the August 2003 issue of The Ring Magazine called "Fights we don't want to see". Lewis vs Vitali was one of them: "The potential exists for Klitschko to nail Lewis with a right hand, but then what? Asking Klitschko to be interesting would be like asking John Ashcroft to hug a hippie: He just couldn't do it.".

 

Lewis himself admitted that he ducked somebody but won't tell us who it was.

 

It is. I thought Usyk was already a greater HW than him, I’m not so sure now. Can you imagine Wlad dropping one of his belts rather than defending it against Fury to fight Sammy Schilt or Badr Hari or whoever the Kickboxing champion at the time was? You can’t, because he would’ve never done it.

 

No, Gomez was a great fighter and a good heavy. Let's not rewrite. Give the man his due.

Briggs would have been a good fight for him as a two-time champ, but also as exactly the kind of fighter Wlad was rarely able to beat...a physically big, imposing puncher.

 

A prime Briggs is a solid win yeah but not Briggs at that stage.