Well then that points even more to Ray being worse than Ike. You could've wasted your time by singing hymns off the rooftops. Makes no difference to me. In terms of top wins, Byrd's are up there with any contenders, and so are his head-to-head abilities. Tua's head-to-head abilities are up there with any contenders, although his resume isn't. Saying Tua and Byrd are 50/50 with Terrell is a laughable statement. I'm not really impressed by him on film, nor having stopped a man who was stopped by Lee Oma, and two middleweights. Beating Lesnevich at heavyweight isn't something I'd really write home about. And I'm a Charles fan. You did, but Ike wasn't perfect technically. He was better than those two, but he could still get wild and was just as imposing and rough as those two. His struggles with them can't he removed from the history books just because they were cruder than Ibeabuci, if anything, that should be a point favour of Ike. Not against. We know that Grant wasn't even close to good enough to be able to beat Byrd or Tua. We know Ike was. Case closed. Ike > Grant.
That’s an opinion that won’t really stand up to debate. There are a lot of contenders out there with strong resumes. There’s nothing on there to worry Joe Bugner. Again this is also a bit wishy washy. Maybe we should be comparing him with Mike Weaver? maybe you need to scrutinise the achievements of some of the older contenders before you write them off. Terrell beat Foley, Machen, Chuvalo, Doug Jones, Cleveland williams and Bob Foster. why do we know Grant wasn’t close to good enough to be able to beat Bryd or Tua before he lost to Lewis? if that was the case why were they both ranked below Michael Grant? Bryd, Tua and Ibeabuchi were all around at the same time. Started around the same time as Grant yet Grant overshadowed all of them and got to the title first. He was the new star of the division. When Bryd was getting knocked out by Ike Grant was getting knocked out by Lewis. Because Grant was rated higher. Tua and ibeabuchi were rated below Grant in the ratings. In fact only Holyfield and Lewis were rated any higher than Grant the last active year of ibeabuchi career. people forget this. But I remember the hype Grant was getting..and it was more hype than Ike was getting because Grant was more gigantic.
I'm pretty sure a win over Vitali Klitschko is something that Bugner would be worried about. Some nice wins, for sure. Lots of asterisks on there, but some nice wins. I'm gonna cut straight through all this quickly. I want a straight Yes or No, here. Do you think Michael Grant was a better fighter than Ike Ibeabuci?
in 1999 We would need to see how both fare against Lennox Lewis to know for sure. and in the year 1999 that was a legitimate question. but I liked Ike better.
You know me George, I always prefer a smaller heavyweight than the SHW sized Grant. It was really only a preference thing on my part. In reality all the talk was of Grant being the future of the division. Big giant sized guys. Grant was going to be the next generation of Bowe and Lewis sized fighters. This was why he absolutely overshadowed Ibeabuchi as the next big thing when both were undefeated. I was out of fashion with the times preferring Ike. Even after beating Tua things went quiet for him until the Bryd win. Then of course no sooner had he scored that win then his career ended. thing with Ike, his body of work is two fights. That’s it. Two fights.
We will never know how good Ike would have been although the feeling is he would have won one of the titles available . JJW on points based on career
Ibeabuchi would obviously win. Ibeabuchi is huge compared to Walcott and he lost to many who were a lot worse than Ibeabuchi. Ibeabuchi would have something like 50lbs on Walcott. Ibeabuchi seemed to be as tough as nails and it wouldn't be long before he'd land. I rate Ibeabuchi very highly. Nothing to do with Ibeabuchi being Nigerian?
It should be noted, that Walcott has an impressive record against punchers. He has wins over Curtis Sheppard, Lee Q Murray, Tommy Gomez, Elmer Ray amongst others. He seems to have made a career out of facing the contenders that nobody else wanted to,
The guys Burns were fighting were generally not even heavyweights by the standards of Wilder's era. I don't see how his competition would give you any confidence he should be favored in this matchup. He's also conceding nearly a foot in height.
At the time that I made the pick, Wilder had not beaten anybody remotely world class, and it was not clear that he would progress past European level. My method of rating active fighters is very conservative I look at what they have accomplished to date, and I round it down. The advantage of this, is that would not look like a twit, if Wilder had turned out to be another Audley Harrison.
