Filip Hrgovic: I want to fight Fabio Wardley for WBO Title but I am open for Kabayel in April aswell

He has a great chin, but he's just too average in too many ways - he's technically decent, but lacks the gas tank to win decisions in 12-round fights, he's got okay power but not enough to knock out even the flakier chins among proper contenders...

Put it together and you have a fighter who's too good for journeymen over 8-10 rounds, and too powerful for glass chinned journeymen, but not really good enough to beat anyone at fringe/legit contender level unless they have exactly the right flaws (ie: heavily reliant on power, very poor gas tank - aka, Zhang).

He's not awful, he's just not special either... Gatekeeper is about right (not that there are actually many contenders right now).

 

Whilst true, I would rather view the scene by ability levels and accept that it's very thin at the top.

It feels arbitrary, and excessively generous, to grant that all of the top 10/15/20 have to automatically be seen as contenders... And that's basically the alternative.

Or you can go wild, as someone did recently, and say that everyone who's ever been in any kind of title fight is automatically a contender - even if there are much better, much more proven guys who haven't.

 

I think Hrgovic beats Fabio...

 

Hrgy has a good shot to beat Wardley but Kabayel is all wrong for him.

 

That shouldn't be how you come to that conclusion though
And also you got to have something worth taking away to be classed as a gate keeper
Ain't no fighter out there thinking "ill fight Hrgovic to get from A to B"

He is a clear contender as of now despite your very strict views on actual contenders
If your ranked in a top ten, your a contender of sorts

For what it's worth I actually agree on your points about him but those points are kinda irrelevant when it comes to classifying a boxer as a gatekeeper

 

It depends how you define it... And I can't deny you have a point about me being a bit stricter than most about how I define them.


Elites are the guys who can and do go around accumulating and holding onto these against most/all comets.

I define legit contenders as guys with a genuine chance of getting their hands on belts without a fluke... If there is an elite guy or two, a level above then you might theoretically need to ignore them for this to make sense.
If you held a league where they all fight each other (if only!) then these are the guys who would be beating everyone else, with possibly a few triangles at the top.

Then fringe contenders, in my book, are guys who could get lucky and find themselves a belt (classic "punchers chance" or could go close on points if the better guys have a slightly off day), but would need luck and would typically lose it quickly if not highly protected...

Gatekeepers are better than the multitude of plodding journeymen and can ask genuine questions of the top guys at times... But don't realistically beat them...
And the reason I put Hrgovic there is because that basically describes him, as I put it above - he's not realistically beating the legit contenders (Usyk, Kabayel, Parker, Dubois - maybe Wardley, maybe AJ/Fury but possibly not anymore), but he doesn't really have a route to a fluke against them either which puts him beneath fringe.


The strength, or weakness, of any given era is defined by two things:
- How many legit and fringe contenders are there (how stacked is that top level)?
- How good is the ceiling of that era (how high a level are that cluster at)?

Right now, things are very thin there aren't many that deserve to be seen as legit, nor that many fringe either - Usyk is at a very high level, but nobody appears to be particularly close to him... And the cluster below are either aging out of it (Fury/AJ), have thin resumes (Kabayel, maybe Wardley) or have a couple of losses where they were badly dominated (Parker, Dubois).


Are my definitions perfect? No, it's impossible to have perfect definitions.
And yes, I know they throw up the odd anomaly that many would disagree with (for example, that AJ was elite for a while and Fury hasn't been because of inconsistency and lack of long runs)... Plus they throw a few popular fighters into categories some would disagree with - Wilder only ever a fringe contender (though I think that's defensible, many would not), Zhang only a fringe contender, etc...

 

Warley and Kabayel should be in line for title shots so even though those are good fights, it wouldnt really make sense for them.

Hrgovic is solid enough and probably just needs 1 good win to justify a shot.

Itauma, Parker or Dubois rematch would be good options.

 

Everyone gets to call the shots. That's why great matchups are often missing. Champions, contenders and Gatekeepers

 

Yeah but he still was hurt especially by Zhang an while he was still tough enough to not go down, he had to stop throwing punches while he gather his senses letting Zhang land a couple more shots. If the same happens against Wardley I can see a brit ref stepping in an stopping the fight prematurely

 

I still think Dubois will be next for Wardley.

 

Good fight. They both have something to prove, the first was a tough fight and slightly controversial, so why not run it back?

 

It looked clearly behind the head but the curious thing is that Hrgovic himself didn't complain much.

 

Yeah he won that fight and should have beaten Dubois again. Dubois did a good job at following the Ward billy-goat gameplan in all fairness.