Who was greater: Ken Norton or Vitali Klitschko

We have no clue how good Ortiz is and most of those title defenses were against poor opposition.

If he added wins over Whyte, Joshua and Parker that should have been enough to put him above Norton

 

Those wins would be enough to put him in the top ten (mainly Joshua).

 

You rate Wilder top 20 don't you?

 

Yes. A 10 straight defense champion is auto top twenty. He and Vitali are the only two who aren’t top ten, I think.

 

Vitali developed a different style after the Lennox fight - he started fast but would also drag you into later rounds and deep waters and take you out.

We don't look at Norton and judge him totally on his ko loss to Jose Luis Garcia by ko or judge Lennox on his ko loss to Oliver McCall. Vitali's 2 losses were injury related and he was leading in both fights. Vitali improved after Lennox and developed patience, and it was an injury that caused him to retire when in his prime, but he came back very well like Foreman, and it added to his resume.

Norton had a flaring weakness - he could not fight backing up and lost whenever he fought someone still alive, he could not move backwards.
I think both Klitschko's would take him out but as far as who was better career wise, Norton comes in 3rd.

 

Vitali may well have become more patient after Lewis, but proving that adaptation has occurred is something else. Lewis was the only opponent who really forced Vitali into a heavyweight fight where the combination of size, strength, and elite ring intelligence all came together.

Later, Vitali was more measured, yes, but he was also facing a much lower level of opposition. So, we can say he appeared to mature stylistically after Lewis. We cannot confidently say the Lewis problems were solved, because he never again faced anyone capable of recreating them.

I agree Vitali should not be judged only by the Byrd and Lewis losses. But those losses should not be wiped clean either. Byrd was not beating him up, but he did make him look crude and short of ideas. Lewis did not win because of a freak injury; the cut came from punches, and Vitali was fading by round six.

So yes, give Vitali context. But give Norton the same context. If we do not reduce Vitali to Byrd and Lewis, we should not reduce Norton to Garcia, Foreman, Shavers, and Cooney. Both men’s losses reveal weaknesses; they just need to be judged fairly.

Norton's weakness in him not being able to 'fight backing up' was real, but it gets overstated. He was not helpless under pressure; he was vulnerable when a dangerous puncher forced him into sudden, disorganized retreat. That makes it a much narrower point of concern, and not one that everyone could exploit.

Vitali was a good big man, but he did not fight with that kind of sudden, destructive pressure. He might well be favored over Norton, but not simply on that basis. That would be a daft basis for a bet.

But this isn't a head-to-head thread discussion, and it has nothing to do with Wlad. Although it's funny how justifications for the K brothers and the poor era they operated in almost invariably lead to sweeping statements about how they'd duff up some poor unfortunate from yesteryear, with little to no compelling evidence to back them up.

Vitali's title run was contested in one of the worst eras on record – and, even then, Vitali took some of the worst performers of that period to etch out a quite nondescript WBC championship. This is why his title reign is respected but not often remembered in detail, because the fights were simply not that memorable.