Vitali Klitschko vs “The Golden era”? Contenders?

If I remember correctly, Sanders dominated all the rounds and in the 4th he had Rahman grobby and went aggressively for the knockout and in return he ate a hand that left him completely lost, but at no time did he look tired, out of 10 fights he would win 9 in my opinion, he was very unlucky in this one.

 

You remember it wrong.

Sanders was down twice in the 3rd and 4th rounds it was a back and forth slugfest and Sanders hardly dominated.

So no I don't agree Sanders wins 9 times out of 10 when Rahman would've been the 2nd best win of his career which puts into perspective Sanders hardly had any notable wins to suggest he was unlucky vs Rahman.

 

It was also an early stoppage. Sanders was defending himself.

 

No it wasn't.

Sanders got stunned by a right hand and didn't throw a punch back in a 20 second assault by Rahman he was frozen.

I counted 30 unanswered punches thrown by Rahman without Sanders throwing a single punch back.

If you're letting the other guy tee off on you for an extended period of time without throwing a punch back you can't really have much argument.

 

Whether i was watching boxing then or not because i wasn't born obviously.

I can still review the history look up the rankings and watch the fights.

Byrd was still higher rated than any fighter Vitali fought until he semi retired and Byrd also held a belt.

Outside of Sanders who had the big win over Wladimir obviously there's no other opponent who Vitali fought during 2000-2004 that would've been better than a win over Byrd.

Byrd would've been the best win of Vitali's career and he had incentive due to losing to Byrd and having a chance to revenge that loss.

 

He was defending himself. Few of those shots were landing. I don’t think Sanders had enough gas to rally again, but it was a strange point to stop a fight.

 

He was highly rated while defending a fake belt with DKP. The fight wasn’t there due to King but you skipped that part.

 

The issue is and it's kind of like Dokes/Weaver 1.

When you're taking so many unanswered punches without throwing back whether you're coherent or not you're not giving the referee much to work with.

 

Well he had legitimised it atleast by beating Holyfield, Tua, in comprehensive fashion.

It's kind of like Dubois being gifted his belt recently but legitimising it by beating Joshua.

 

Nobody cared about what Byrd and Ruiz were doing. They rarely even got network slots by that time, often fighting on low budget DKP pay per views that nobody bought.

Lewis was the man and Vitali was an exciting and worthy heir when Lewis retired. Vitali scorched through Johnson, Williams and Sanders but unfortunately got injured and had the Lewis rematch and Tyson fight fall through before that.

The Wlad/Sanders belt was the second best thing going, and the DKP titles were a distant third and fourth.

 

But do you agree beating Byrd in a rematch would've been on paper Vitali’s best win of his career ?

 

No. Sanders was far more dangerous.

 

More dangerous in a H2H sense is debatable considering Sanders had been inactive was out of shape and at the end of his career.

Byrd would be ranked higher than Sanders in the all time Heavyweight rankings and on name value would be the better win overall.

 

Did you see the fight? I only got confused during the rounds, but until the third round, where Sanders went for the knockout without any care, it was all his dominance.
He was clearly unlucky in this fight.

 

38 year old inactive out of shape Sanders in the twilight of his career ? I don't agree.

Maybe in the early rounds but Sanders certainly wasn't conditioned to go into 2nd half of the fight and be competitive where as Byrd would be.