Wladimir Klitschko Should Be More Appreciated

Last night hurt Wlad’s standing…

A man with power and some ambition made AJ look a total novice and beat him from pillar to post for 5 one-sided rounds.

None of us rate AJ as a skilled boxer… hands too low, poor defense, stiff etc

And he was up on the cards against Wlad who is meant to be a top boxer that you cannot beat on points.

His consistency should be admired albeit against poor opposition.

But after last night there’s even more reason to doubt he could beat a lot of the greats

 

I respectfully disagree. Wlad fought Joshua at age 41 in his final bout. Joshua then losing to Dubois seven years later doesn’t really hurt Wlad’s legacy in any way in my opinion.

 

Do you also think Muhammad Ali was a mediocre heavyweight for losing to Trevor Berbick?

 

Are you being serious? the two fights are almost a decade apart for ****s sake and Wlad was in his 40s.

 

Number 4 all time.

 

He is appreciated but he suffered some shocking defeats aswell in his physical prime that look quite bad and are a knock against him. Sanders absolutely obliterated Wladimir easily and he never revenged that loss plus Sanders had an unremarkable career for the most part so that is a bad loss.

Wladimir does deserve respect from how he bounced back and had a long reign. But the issue is he could never fight his brother so we never truly found out who was the best.

Plus all the boring uneventful fights Wladimir had aswell with his ridiculous clinching especially in the Povetkin fight does hurt his popularity aswell.

 

That is the reason why I don't rate him that high compared to other top HW's.

Wlad had a lot of good points; terrific power, tall, great athlete for his size with quick hands and feet, and a good array of quick, crisp, accurate shots. Unfortunately, due to not having the sturdiest whiskers, he developed an ultra defensive and more predictable style. All things considered, it greatly helped him as he went on to have a long and successful carrer. However, he was greatly helped by being in a weak era that largely consisted of fighters tailor made for him; smaller, slow, flat footed fighters. Whenever anyone gave Wlad anything other than a stationary target, he would often struggle, and his already low work rate would reduce to practically nothing.

I believe Wlad would have struggled more in a more competitive era with opposition with a wider variety of styles.

Ultimately, he was a good fighter who did what he had to do (beat who was put in front of him), but who was put in front of him was usually not that impressive.

Wlad was actually hugely underrated in his prime. It is in retirement where I see him get overrated by many. This is nothing new in sport, though.

 

Wlad is better and rightly higher ranked than all these guys including Usyk (at HW)

 

I remember 8 or 9 years ago almost everybody was insulting Wlad, saying that he's boring, coward, fraud etc.

 

I get the rush to downgrade guys after a result but I disagree, too much time in between these bouts for them to have any insight on one another. Also I think Aj still deserves respect for what he's done in the division being the main attraction when heavyweight boxing lacked one for years. I can't even rate what this fight means do him yet until we see what Dubois does next. If he mows down the next handful of guys he faces it's different than if he gets clipped by a lower level guy his next time out. I have a much better understanding of why Wlad fought safety 1st once guys started getting bigger than I did in real time for sure lol.

 

I agree with some of that, but I rank Usyk higher than Klitschko because

1) Usyk never lost, Klitschko had some bad losses to not-so-great opponents

2) Usyk became undisputed, which Klitschko never achieved

3) Usyk was the undisputed and linear champion in TWO divisions

4) Usyk has been at a size disadvantage at HW, Klitschko was bigger than most of his opponents

I'm not trying to disparage Wladimir Klitschko, I agree he IS under-appreciated by many and he had a GREAT run at heavyweight, but I rate Usyk above him. However, I rate Klitschko higher than all the other current and recent heavyweight titleholders such as Fury, Dubois, Wilder, and Joshua.