Wladimir's career path always interested me because he had to come back from brutal defeats against Purrity,Sanders, and Brewster. The PRE-Steward version of Wladimir had a very weak chin and bad stamina. If he started his career in the early 90's, he would have been exposed by a variety of big punchers. Now after Sanders in 2003, he was able to rebuild and go against Brewster, where he lost again. At that time, the HW Division had no stars, and was overall extremely weak from top to bottom. This enabled him to still get the bigger fights because despite all the losses, he was still one of the big stars of the division. He got a big fight against Samuel Peter by only beating Castillo and Williamson.If the Sanders and Brewster losses happened in the early 90's, there is a serious chance he would have been send against a Ruddock or a young Lewis next as a record paddler and at that stage of his career, I just don't see Wladimir beating even Ruddock. If Wlad in the 90's some how managed to earn his way into a big fight despite all his losses. Samuel Peter I (the fight that was really a make or break for Wlad) would have been against some one like a Riddick Bowe. A Prime Wlad will beat a prime Bowe, but not the version that was recovering from his defeats. I just don't see how Wladimir could have reached his full potential and prime in the 90's, and came back from 3 knock out defeats in a much more stacked era. A Prime Wladimir probably beats everyone in the 90's era bar Lewis. The biggest issue that I see is I don't know if Wladimir could have reached his full potentials in a 90's era that was so stacked with punchers.What would most likely have happened is he would have gotten knocked out 2-3 times like he did, attempt to make his comeback, but will get knocked out again and retired.
Pointless post. The 90's were deep in B Level fighters and massive punchers, not so much as in ATG Talent. There were a total of four ATG talents in the 90's (Bowe,Lewis,Holyfield,Tyson) The heavyweight eras always lacked ATG Talent in the first place. That is not the point. Everyone knows Prime Wlad beats most of the 90's era. The point is that a green Wladimir and a inexperienced Pre Manny Wlad would have had to fight through a list of massive punchers and B Level fighters much superior to the likes of Williamson and Moli. Guys like Moli and Williamson were fed to Wladimir after his KO defeats because the current HW Scene lacked star power and Wladimir was still seen as one of only two potential cash cows (Peter being the other one at the time) If Wlad had suffered 2 knockout losses in a span of 5 fights in the 90's era, he would have had to fight against the likes of Prime Bruno,Golota just to 'get back into contention' Current Wladimir crushes Golota or Bruno, but a Pre-Manny, Post Corrie Sanders version of Wlad had zero confidence, lacked any killer instincts, and his mindset was shot to ****. There is a real chance that if he had fought Prime Bruno instead of Moli and Williamson after his ko defeats, he would have been knocked out again with no room to recover like he had during the mid 2000's.