Never seen the 20's Godfrey (or the pre 1900 one ) and know little of him except for the fact he was vetoed for the tournament to find Dempseys successor (as posted by someone a few weeks ago on a **** hot thread) Tell me more. Any footage available?
Its hard to beat Wlad of today unless you have a generous reach because you know he is not going to give up his reach and these days he generally always fights a disciplined fight, now what other option do you have, to attack him at angles or bum rush him, now if you bum rush you got understand who hard the man can hit,and that even though he is a reluctant robot a lot of the time he can counter.
Well there are two ways of doing this, either you use the angles and attack off them and then get back out of range or you use the angles to attack and stay inside, now the problem with pulling it out is no matter how fast your feet are Wlad has a big reach and can catch you on the tail end of his punch pulling out, now you could stay inside with him but can you fight inside? we know Wlad cant but he does not let you fight inside he holds and stop you working. Its a bit of a dilemma, best way is to catch with a punch so you can shake him outta his rhythm that way you cant take a few more chances, plus Wlad lacks composure a lot of the time so if he can disorganize him by hitting with a good punch then........... You gotta land that shot without leaving yourself open though.
Put it this way, a fighter with a reach disadvantage whom I couldn't see Wlad beating is Holyfield. Despite the fact that Bowe showed (at times) a big man with a good jab could stifle Holy, without his own inside skills Evander would've been battering him. He still managed to close the distance at times without Bowe's choosing, and even at 47 managed to get into punchign range against an even bigger porposition (though I'm not at all comparing Valuev's jab to Wlads ) Holy has the chin to deal with what Wlad can land on him, the workrate, accuracy and combinations to get him out of there.
A prime! Holyfield definitely could. I think Holyfield is smarter than Wlad though and thats why i think he would negate the reach disparity,plus he has a tough chin.
Godfrey is such an unknown quantity that it is impossible to even atempt an informed prediction. It would be hard enought to predict how he would have done in his own era with better managment.
