Holyfield/Valuev was similar. Holyfield is no longer a money maker, there was more money to be had doing the goliath/david angle with Haye/Valuev, leading into the megafight between Wlad and Haye.
Getting hit in the head in the right place does funny things to you. I can buy that one, kind of a delayed shot, then his equilibrium is gone.
David Haye's last two fights. why didnt he try harder against Wlad? It could of been his last chance at the big time The Audley Fraud. it can be strongly argued that Audley lay down in that round
Thomas Hearns vs Nate Miller. Nate just seemed uninspired as he has for many of his fights just moreso in this fight against a living legend far past his prime.:think I'm not suggesting Tommy had anything to do with it;it just seemed odd.
this might be the worst i've seen. gonzalez didn't have a chance to leave with the title. if he would have ko'ed coggi (which he did in reality) they still would have named coggi the winner.
Seems like Alexander-Kotelnik could've been a fix. 1)Motivation: There was a big-money fight with Alexander and Bradley on tap. Kotelnik was a King fighter as well, so influence could've handed down by King that he was there to make Alexander look good. 2) Execution: Alexander wins 116-112 across the board; three judges scoring it that wide for Alexander is a tell-tale sign that Kotelnik wasn't going to win that fight regardless of how he fought, which turned out to be much better than expected. 3) Aftermath: Alexander-Bradley happened, but his showing against Kotelnik took some luster off the fight. The media immediately overlooked it in order to continue hyping up Bradley-Alexander as they had been. What does King do with Kotelnik? He forces Kotelnik to move up in weight to 147 in order to squash any mention of a rematch, and then proceeds to keep Kotelnik on the shelf ever since that fight. That's not the reaction a promoter generally takes when one of his fighters does better than expected and looks good against a top 5 fighter in the division; that's what a promoter does to punish a fighter who doesn't follow orders or otherwise upsets the apple cart a little too much. So, for a recent example, Alexander-Kotelnik hits all 3 criteria I look for in a possible fix. The motivation was there, there's signs it was executed because of the scoring, and the aftermath of what happened fits the overall theory.
Absoutely nothing fishy about this mate. [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAdTNqw-g5A&feature=player_detailpage[/ame]