Schmeling and Baer (assuming he's serious) KO him in a quite one sided fight. Prime Sharkey wins by UD
It's always impossible to know how much of a modern fighter's success is due to PEDs and how much is innate to their physical makeup, but assuming we take the Lebedev as he is (or was, in his prime) back to the 30s I think he does very well indeed. Calls of one sided KOs are ridiculous IMO. Lebedev is, and would always be, one extremely tough man to stop. He was only ever halted once in his career (NC), due to a hellacious eye injury that'd make even Marciano wince, and even when past his best managed to take a young Murat Gassiev the distance, fighting back from a terrific body shot knockdown to claw his way back into the contest (a little too late though). He's also a fighter whose brutish appearance belies his under-appreciated skillset. At his best he was a very good puncher/swarmer. He could fight very well in the pocket, had a great punch arsenal, including an excellent counter left, and frequently made educated use of footwork and angles to open up fighters to his punishing combinations. I think those skills and attributes alone would have given Baer major problems. The other two I wouldn't like to say.
I guess both Schmeling and Sharkey could have outboxed him if they were able to get past the physical pressure they'd find themselves up against (Lebedev is a solid tank of a man that officially weighs 200lbs and probably more on the night). They'd need to keep him on the outside though, and that just wasn't the way 1930s fighters tended to operate. Most likely they'd try to turn things into a mauling inside fight, and that gives Lebedev a lot of opportunities. Baer? That'd come down to toughness and punching power, and Lebedev has the goods to land some heavy leather on Baer's exposed chin. If he can take Baer's power then I'd favour him to take it.
This. Lebdev got massacred by Jones, who wasn't half as skilled as Schmeling was. Baer had a better straight right and counter right than any heavyweight or cruiserweight in boxing today and was an even better finisher than Wilder himself. Sharkey also was very experienced and regularly fought and beat better and more experienced fighters than Lebdev himself.
Here's Lebedev landing a four punch combination around the guard of the defensively sound Murat Gassiev. https://media.giphy.com/media/2vlSyTCqIy3RG1EzB2/giphy.gif Here's Baer with his arms down getting clobbered by a similar combination from the averagely skilled Jim Braddock. https://media.giphy.com/media/1yiOPh3eLGc0ZIQ3Wb/giphy.gif I don't think it's a stretch to say that Lebedev would be able to hit Baer, and hit him often. The problem becomes if Baer can take Lebedev's best shots and dish back his own with mustard. I don't think that's a given, and Lebedev was good at boxing on the backfoot when need be. He did it for long stretches of the Marco Huck fight (a fighter with some stylistic similarities to Baer). https://media.giphy.com/media/1jaLZ3fPjnxZoNYeLx/giphy.gif If we get a focussed Baer I think this is a gruelling and evenly matched fight with some brutal leather being thrown around. If we get a Baer who tries to play cute Lebedev uses his face for target practice.
You can't be serious in comparing Braddock, who had over 80 fights when he fought Baer and was proven against top competition to a 27 fight novice like Gassiev, who couldn't even compete the first time he stepped up against Usyk. Huck was legit and had some experience when he fought and beat Lebdev, but even at his best Huck never developed his skillset to the level that Sharkey or Schmeling did. Also, Baer was easily twice the puncher Gassiev is.
I'm actually comparing Gassiev to Baer in that clip, and Braddock to Lebedev. Regardless, I rate fighters based on what I see in the ring, not how many times they fight. Braddock, like a lot of guys from that era, fought often enough just to pay the rent. The quality of the opponent was often quite poor. There's some experience to be had from that, I suppose, but also a lot of stagnation. You may be nursing constant injuries which limit your abilities, you don't have proper time to work on gameplans or integrate new skills, and losses can set back your confidence levels or put you into a journeyman mindset. Experience, like a lot of things, is qualitative, not quantitative. Fighters nowadays can attain world level in a fraction of the fights. That isn't a negative reflection on the standards of the sport, but rather a change in the landscape. Most of the hard work and experience-building is done in the gym, behind closed doors. Information on opponents is widespread, and strategies and gameplans can be honed accordingly. Fights above a certain level pay well enough that you don't need to do it often just to make ends meet. Even taking that into account, Gassiev is still an outlier in the depth of maturity he shows after so relatively few fights, amateur and pro. He's already beaten multiple men at world level with far greater "experience" than himself like Wlod and Dorticos, and rarely shows any of the sloppy tendencies that inexperienced fighters display. Look at this clip: https://media.giphy.com/media/C9jBQYL84GsR1g8GRc/giphy.gif That's not your typical twenty fight amateur at all. Crisp, compact punches off the same hand, fighting off the ropes, swift efficient head movement behind a high guard, total calm under pressure. This against a world ranked fighter and then world champion with a sixty-five fight amateur record, and he fought like this the entire fight. Of course, he also trains with some of the best guys in the sport right now, including Golovkin, under the tutelage of Abel Sanchez, so it's not totally surprising that he's able to display this level of craft. Anyway, this is a massive digression. Point I'm making: don't bring up stats alone to support your argument. And never, ever claim that fighters beating multiple world champions and universally ranked top ten fighters aren't proven against top competition.
Also, what do you mean by Baer was twice the puncher that Gassiev was? He hit twice as hard? He was twice as good at landing his power shots? Either one I'd dispute, frankly.
That statement makes no sense. You can only effectively learn something by doing it. If fighters can attain world level in a fraction of the fights than that is clearly a sign in the level of competition in the sport declining. Gym work isn't a substitute for real fight experience. If Gassiev were more experienced and skilled he wouldn't have fell for the same combinations from Usyk for virtually all 12 rounds and would've found a way to neutralize some of Usyk's Speed. Baer faced plenty of guys just as fast and as skilled as Usyk and knew how to cut the ring off, work the body to slow the quicker fighter down, and setup the power shots for the finish. Abel was telling Gassiev all of the right instructions, but Gassiev's lack of ring experience and limited experience with good competition showed, since Gassiev shut down and went into survival mode. Also, I don't rate Dortico's, since he can't punch, has a weak chin, and a very sloppy skillset. The Gassiev-Dortico's fight was a forgone conclusion. Nobody in their right mind thought Gassiev as green and stiff as he is could lose to Dorticos. Braddock and Baer at least fought top competition in route to becoming champions. Dortico's beat a bunch of cruiserweight tomato cans, but then fought Edison Miranda, a light heavyweight washout and was completely exposed as a non-puncher. Bellew due to being more skilled and experienced would've made quick work out of Dorticos, who isn't even half as skilled as the fighters Bellew was facing at lightheavyweight. Dorticos and Miranda This content is protected The only good competition Dortico's has fought besides Gassiev. I wasn't impressed and knew Dortico's was all hype. I can only judge a fighter when he faces good competition and the only good competition Gassiev has faced was Lebdev (semi-shot and old) and Usyk, who easily toyed with him and most likely didn't go for the stoppage out of sympathy more than inability. Wlod was 10 years past prime when Gassiev beat him, so I can't give Gassiev any credit for that win.
What good fighter has Gassiev knocked out? He couldn't knock out an old Lebdev or an old Ismail Abdoul. Gassiev has good power, but he's an overrated puncher and even more overrated as a finisher. Bellew is a far better puncher and finisher than Gassiev is.
Yes, you learn something by doing it, and if what you're doing is fighting scrubs every month that's what your experience will consist of. As I said before, experience isn't a quantitative attribute. You cannot become better simply by getting more experience unless the experience is specifically helping you to grow, and in many cases the experience these men were getting didn't elevate them to levels above and beyond what we see in modern fighters. The best we can say of them is that they were solid, workmanlike fighters not prone to making sloppy mistakes. Braddock was a good example of that, but he didn't impress in any way. That Baer was unable to cut the ring on him was due to the fact that Baer wasn't, in fact, that adept at cutting off the ring, not due to any silky smooth super-Usyk level footwork that Braddock displayed. Indeed, for long stretches of their fight Baer wasn't even coming forward on Braddock, but just standing still with his hands down in a come-at-me posture looking to counter (which he was generally unable to do) while Braddock sauntered around him popping him with the jab and right hand. The rest of the time he plodded after him like a moron, eating more jabs and right hands and getting tied up in clinches. Why didn't he adapt? Where was all this experience he could draw upon? Gassiev at least tried. I seem to recall quite a few fans and pundits being split down the middle myself. Good for you. Hopefully Dorticos and Bellew can fight some day. I'm sure it'll be a very exciting fight, however it goes down. By that rationale you can't give Bellew any credit for his top wins at CW either. A prime David Haye couldn't even knock out Abdoul, along with 36 of the 37 other men that beat him. That's a pretty odd example to choose. You need to justify that comment, I'm afraid. Everything you've criticised and marginalised Gassiev for applies to Bellew.
If you say so. Baer lost to Braddock, but it was a competitive fight among two elite fighters much like GGG-Canelo, which is also a fight between two elite fighters. The Usyk-Gassiev fight was a complete wash with one elite fighter fighting a fairly decent fighter with some power. Going into the fight I expected Usyk to stop Gassiev, but Usyk being a nice guy clearly carried Gassiev to the distance out of sympathy. It was so obvious that Usyk was holding back and carrying Gassiev that even Abel wanted to stop the fight, since didn't win a round. Even Michael Hunter put up a better effort and was more competitive against Usyk and Hunter isn't half the fighter his father was. A guy like Gassiev with his limited experience should be fighting at least 5-10 times a year to compensate for his not having much of an amateur career. At this point in his career Gassiev should've already had around 40-50 fights. That fact that he doesn't says that he's lazy. We saw what happened the moment he faced a good opponent. I don't need to see Bellew fight Dorticos. Bellew knocks him flat and early. Cleverly, a prime Chilemba, and an in-shape Edison Miranda were all more competition than anything Dortico's could bring to the table. Bellew beat an in-shape Miranda into submission while an out of shape Miranda is the best win on Dortico's resume and Dortico's couldn't put a dent in Miranda. At cruiserweight Gassiev has a win over #2 Lebdev (old and semi-shot) and #5 Dorticos, who was coming off a win over unranked Kudrayashov. Bellew has a win over #5 Makabu, who was coming off a win over #8 Mchunu. Bellew is now going to be fighting Usyk for the number one spot at cruiserweight. As much as I like Usyk and would love to see him make the successful transition to heavyweight he's most likely going to get knocked out by Bellew. Bellew isn't a novice like Gassiev, Hunter, Mchunu, one dimensional like Glowacki and Briedis, or shot like Huck. Also, David Haye fought Abdoul 8 years before Gassiev did. Abdoul was 36 years old and had 42 fights more fights since the Haye fight when he fought Gassiev, which is why I said an old Abdoul.
