Who is the most talented of them besides Kabayel? I think it's actually very poor based on today's performances. Don't think either of them will get near the title shot or top-10. Is it lack of good trainers, laziness or just lack of talent? Kadiru for example was considered a hot prospect as amateur, but nowdays he looks very mediocre in every possible way (speed, skills, ring IQ etc). Seems like he regressed as a pro boxer. Others don't look much better too. Viktor Vykhryst once looked like promising prospect with pretty good amateur pedigree, yet he quit against Pero and doesn't even remotely look like a HW contender.
I wonder what happened to that scene. Klitschkos used to pack 50k football stadiums every fight. Did boxing just die in Germany after Wlad retired?
Klitschko‘s were also massive media personalities and heroes away from boxing. Their „good cop“ image, Phd‘s, physical health and clean appearance resonated well with German public. after them, not much
It was a slow process after the Klitschko-era. TV-Stations were leaving. Boxing moved from free-TV to the Internet so the casual Fan lost interest. Even our biggest names at the moment Kaybael and Eifert ( who will fight Bivol soon) are unknown to the casual Sport fan who was watching nearly every big Klitschko event 15 years ago. Only the Hardcore fans will watch the Bivol vs Eifert fight via PayTV / illegal Stream so it won't be a big topic in the Media especially with the soccer world cup coming up soon.
Id been considering making a thread about this. German boxing was big and not limited to the klitschkos. I remember universum having big banner ads on here and the main page hyping up their champions. Other fighters like Sturm, Abraham, Huck and more were routinely drawing crowds. There was a European forum section and a slew of posters all locked in to that scene. Feels like the stature of German boxing has completely went away
Its like HBO and SHO leaving boxing in the US. At one point it was unimaginable, and then it happened.
German promoters, broadcasters and K2 promotions had no Plan-B. They rigged Klitschko fights too, ring surface, gloves, PED coverups, the whole thing finally blew up in their face and of 2015. Good riddance
My two cents: the commentary and the whole media package back then was questionable. All the smaller fights were 'world championships' of some kind (certainly not relevant ones) even though some german ranked 50 fought some noname rank 1000. They commentary was blatantly biased and non informative. Sentenced like 'he needs to punch more' were the analysis part... And rocky graziano was the one who actually called out the frequent robberies against opponents that should have been outmatched in the first place. Then they sacked him. Had to bring him back though, as he was so popular with the viewers. Not all of this might be accurate, but it is the picture that whole media situation left with me (rather the private tv stations than the public ones i think) when i started watching boxing, but german boxing was already on the decline (2010-2015). After that 95% of the broadcasts i watched were english (also often biased, but less blatantly and cheap) or the new dazn (which have their own problems, but are commentary wise way batter than those broadcasts of the past)
Petar Milas is a strong puncher and physically fit. He had a long period of inactivity before he went to fight Yoka in France - TWO YEARS - he would have done better with a decent promoter to keep him active. I like that he's fought twice this year already, winning both fights with knockouts. Other than he and Kabayel, there's not really any heavyweights fighting out of Germany who have impressed me. I would like to see Jurk tested against a decent opponent. He might turn out to be okay, but it's impossible to say at this point. There were quite a number of good heavyweights in Germany 15-20 years ago: Pulev, Platov, Virchis, Chagaev, the Klitschkos, Boystov, Bidenko, Gerber, among others. I remember Gerber and Ondrej Pala were victims of terrible British stoppages against Chisora (by Fish Eyes' Queensberry referees, they were not even slightly hurt).
You mean Graciano Rocchigiani aka Rocky yeah. But he wa sstill doing comms up until his death,in fact I remember watching Hrgovic vs Mansour on SAT1 with him on comms and that was weeks before he died. They even had a rality type show The Next Rocky to find a succesor,offcourse failed. Truth is once RTL and ZDF pulled the plug it wa sover.
Revisionist history at work. Both were ok.Pala turned his back and wasnt fighting back and Gerber was done.
