Did Wlad deserved to be DQ'd vs Povetkin?

without a shadow of a doubt. Not only should he has been disqualified, he should have been banned from boxing for a year. The Germans would allow him to get away with anything though.

 

He was literally jumping at Povetkin to grapple him.
Wlad has always been a fake gentleman and a cheater. He's currently pretending to defend Ukraine on social media with a rifle while going to rich people parties in Arabia with his designer outfits.

Very weird how he made all this hype about coming back so he could be in the spotlight again, then suddenly shut it all down because 'Usyk was continuing'. Of course he is, that was always going to happen and Wlad knew it.

 

He should have been warned early and then docked points for holding. Then, disqualified if he persisted.

That said, Povetkin himself was initiating a lot of the clinches. As soon as he got into range he was more than happy to stretch out his arms and hug Wlad back. It's like he had given up all ideas of infighting and had run out of ideas. Awful fight.

 

Exactly, especially the last few rounds Povetkin was diving in to hold.

 

I remember that fight like it was yesterday and it was irritating to watch, I almost fell asleep from boredom and we all expected a great fight, Wlad should have been disqualified...

 

Absolutely not.

To begin with Wlad only had one point deduction in round 11.

So worst case scenario, Wlad deserves an earlier points deduction.

That's not to mention how many holds Povetkin initiated, so he should have been deducted also.

 

Povetkins own willingness to clinch and lack of enthusiasm to fight out of it might have had to do with the innumerable hammer-like jabs and check hooks he ate throughout the fight… just maybe…

Go watch a clip of Joe Frazier when hes clinched, then look at Povetkin, you’ll see as much as Wlad held, Povetkin was also very “accepting” of the clinch…..

 

Not the way I remember it, and I'll contextualize it this way:

There are three points of blame here. The top one for me is the referee. They normally let the champion or the "A-side" get away with whatever their foul preferences are-and it's always wrong when they do. But this referee could've done what was done in the Jennings match and it would have likely become competitive. You don't deserve to be disqualified for this tactic unless you've been repeatedly warned and twice had points deducted, imo. It's not like someone headbutting you (as Wlad actually did to Fury, pretty blatantly). It's not that level of foul, and it has to be treated differently than that. So. blame number one is the referee never allowed it to get to disqualification in a natural progression by starting to deal with it so late. If he had called DQ at any point, even after the warning, that I remember, that would've been abrupt because he hadn't been on it from jump where he should've been. They could've forced tactical change in the opening third of the fight and put Wlad in danger of losing on points or DQ because of penalty and that's the more appropriate reaction. Then if he continues to abuse what he's doing, he should've been DQ'd. Only then. I have him at 50% blame.

Blame number 2: Wlad, who takes it only secondarily as it's the ref's job firstly to stop things from getting to this point. Wlad does this when he isn't hurt and actually does know how and is physically capable of punching short on smaller men. It's more absurd that he abuses this tactic when he has someone completely outmatched. He completely tainted what is arguably HIS BEST OPPONENT. I blame him at 30%.

Blame number 3: Povetkin diving in under Wlad's guard, head to stomach, ready to grab too and hapless to break out of Wlad's wet blanket when he did want to, when he knew he should be training around the tactic. So, it's both failing to deal with something Wlad normally gets away with, that WE ALL KNOW ABOUT FOR YEARS, and him initiating it himself which is happening, in addition to Wlad abusing it more than he even usually does and the referee being complicit even more than all of them usually are. There is also something to do with head control here, where most tall fighters get a guy diving under their guard this way are not going to just allow them to bring their head up on them offensively if they should try or do it incidentally. It's a little like wrestling. Someone gives you their back, take it. If you're both on your feet and one guy is bent down in front of you, showing his back, the ref has two things here: One, don't allow the tall fighter to drape their body weight on the bent fighter's back- it's dangerous, dirty, and not boxing, and two, tell that bent fighter to stop bending at the waist in front of the tall guy and diving in that way. That is also going to make this happen. Povetkin in no way helped himself, like you have to do in your career sometimes, when things are not fair. I give him 20% blame, as he's not a straight victim here. He has some accounting for how this played out.

In short: It was a mess, Wlad deserved to be told he WOULD BE DQ'd, if he continued. But not DQ'd without more warning and additional point deduction, and much, much earlier, where he had to worry both about DQ and just losing on points from deductions. Both fighters should've been cautioned to alter course to prevent this, but the referee is bumfluff.

 

A serious BE post? Surely not. I shall mark this down as a historic moment.

 

Professional boxing is a hybrid sport. On one hand there are the official rules and regulations governing the events and on the other there are the commercial considerations.

If Wlad had been disqualified then his next bouts would have been harder to sell meaning less money for boxers, referees, trainers etc. This had to be weighed against Povetkins interests of winning this fight.

 

I'm not going to ever rewatch this fight, but from how I remember the fight, Povetkin initiated a fair number of these clinches himself. It wasn't totally Wlad's fault.
By the way, if you watch early rounds of Lewis-Tyson, you'd see the same amount of clinching there.

So no, he shouldn't have been disqualified.

 

The fight was in Moscow.

 

It was ugly no question about it but people forget that Povetkin was knocked down 4 times in the fight. Every time they exchanged Povetkin got hurt. Look at the state of his face after the fight. At a certain point he mentally checked out and dove into Wlad’s chest at every opportunity because he wanted to live to see another day.