I like Calvin Brock, and like it or not, he put in a damn good effort against Wlad, mounted an offense, and tried to engage the big guy...even had him frustrated throughout the first 5 rounds.
yes brock put up a worthy challenge and didnt disgrace himself. he did some decent body work but failed to pressure wlad. he didnt let his hands go enough. his style was too similar to wlad's, an orthodox boxer. nodoby is gonna outbox wlad. u have to knock his ass out. when wlad pushed the gas pedal, brock was stuck in neutral. i thought he would recover and be a factor but his conditioning was awful against chambers. he weighed 17 pounds more than angainst wladimir. he has a long road in front of him
I was pretty much thinking about Calvin Brock as well during the fight. He put up a very good fight against Wlad. Like someone else said on the forum here its like cruiser weight is the new heavyweight because the heavyweights now are way too big.
When Brock was in good shape, he's was decent top 10 guy. He doesn't do anything spectacular, but he does a variety of things pretty decent.
The problem is, Brock tried to do some things against Wlad and wound up becoming a highlight reel KO. Every fighter Wlad's fought since then hasn't even tried to engage him consistently, and that's a big reason why. They'd rather lose by jab than trying to do more offensively at the risk of leaving themselves open. What I've seen since the Brock fight is that his opponents don't want to get Wlad angry, and come in with extremely conservative fight plans to save themselves from taking huge shots. Instead of initiating offense, they want to wait to counterpunch off of Wlad's powershots- which is why Wlad's won all 3 of his fights since Brock essentially 1 handed. He's been content to not force the issue, and that's essentiall neutered the oppositions' offense against him.
Brock fought very bravely against Wladimir. He had a gameplan and attempted to mount an offense to the best of his abilities. He simply was outgunned, and there's no shame in that. I was very disappointed in him after the Chambers fight. He should have beaten the thoroughly mediocre Eddie, but he didn't train properly and deserved to lose. At his best, Brock is a textbook fighter (literally) who doesn't beat himself. He doesn't take many chances but pecks away and racks up points. He frustrated Wladimir with his steady defense, but he didn't have the goods to actually reach Klitschko. Wladimir was blocking those punches about a foot from his face. It was brave, but hopeless.
I agree. If the smaller and more mobile fighter decides to play defense and avoid confrontation, there's only so much the bigger man can do. Wladimir certainly isn't going to gas himself trying to entertain, nor should he. He'll look a lot better if the opponent tries to beat, which no one really does anymore. If Povetkin gets grand ideas as some of his supporters would have us believe, he'll make Wladimir look very, very good.
