Was corrie sanders ever a top 10 contender prior to knocking out wladimir klitschko?

Never Ring ranked before Wlad. In fact Wlad is the only Ring ranked top ten fighter he ever beat. Im not sure, but i dont think he beat an ABC top 10 fighter unless you're counting the WBU.

He was a decent fighter he could just never turn the corner.

 

ranked by who

 

Not by the Ring as far as I know, but you do see him pop up in the alphabet ratings during the 90s. The IBF were particular fans - they had him ranked as early as 1993 and, later in the decade, as high as #3. Not for several years before he fought Klitschko, though.

 

He was sporadically ranked by some of the alphabet organizations here and there but not by ring as far as I know

 

He was never ranked by Nate Tubbs.

 

No. He was closest at the end of 1999 when he'd been the WBU champ for two years. After beating Sanders Rahman was ranked 9th by the Ring for the end of 2000. So if Sanders had won that fight he probably would have made it. After that Sanders had two tuneup fights before Klitschko. So he couldn't have been top 10 then.

Despite getting more title shots and opportunities than Sanders it is worth noting that countryman Frans Botha never appeared in Rings top 10.

So far as ABC's it's hard to imagine he wasn't in someone's top 10 when he held the WBU belt. Crawford Grimsley made multiple top 10's. But the ABC's don't like ranking the champs of minor organizations.

 

He wasnt ranked at the time but Wlad was **** hot at the time and no one wanted to fight him, even though he had the WBO belt. Except for Corrie Sanders, who only was paid about $125,000 for the fight.

 

Prior to Wlad he was plagued by inactivity, losing at the wrong time, and struggling to secure big fights.

Rahman was a true crossroads fight. It could easily have gone either way, but the winner was en route to a title shot and the loser left on the fringes.

The WBU belt was a bit of a poisoned chalice. It was significant enough (outside the US) to be worth defending, but also meaningless in terms of ranking and the main action. It seems a bit absurd in retrospect, but the WBU was trying to do what the WBO did less than a decade earlier.

Inactivity was the main factor I think. Heavies are always only one win from relevance, as long as they are in the right fights (eg Maskaev). If Sanders was based in the US fighting top 20 guys regularly, the loss to Rahman wouldn’t have set him back as much.

He was on a bit of a roll running upto Rahman, but within certain parameters. He was bombing out guys like Al Cole who were expected to give him rounds, but it’s still just a win over Al Cole.

It’s not surprising that he wasn’t ranked based on wins, but it’s generally regarded that his talent was at the higher end of the division and he would probably have beaten a few of the top 10 guys at any given time.

 

This content is protected

 

It's amazing that all the people that posted on this thread that said that he wasn't ranked (and being so full of themselves) are wrong. He was ranked #10 according to the September 1994 edition of The Ring Magazine.

 

Yes, he was around the lower end of the top ten contenders, but he wasn't especially well known. He was the type of fighter you would see in a knockout highlight reel without knowing his name. That momentum was derailed by the loss to Nate Tubbs. He rebuilt himself and worked his way back into contention, leading to the Rahman fight, which he lost. After that, he faded back into obscurity until two years later, when Wlad pulled him out of the shadows for a title defense. Classic cherry pick gone wrong.

My thoughts on Corrie Sanders in detail:

 

Glad you mentioned his hero status, and for those who do not know it wasn’t because he beat Wlad or anything to do with boxing.

It was because he died in a heroic way, making a choice all of us can only hope we would be brave enough to make if we were in a similar situation — I’d like to think I would, but none of us can really know unless faced with those circumstances and only seconds to act.

He was at a birthday party at a restaurant talking to his 15-year-old daughter and a niece when armed robbers entered with guns blazing. He became a human shield for his daughter, taking bullets that would fatally wound him. Shot, he dragged his daughter to the floor and told her to play dead. He literally gave his life to save hers.

I’m not a big Corrie Sanders fan as far as him as a fighter, but can’t think of a single boxer I admire more as a man.