How boxing savvy are you?

He's not 200lbs come fight night. With the day-before-fight-weighin rules, boxers can weight drain to compete at lower weight classes while being bigger. For all his cruiserweight fights he was around 215lbs by fight night, and not exactly by adding fat:

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well, then, at least you are consistent.

and truth be told, the heavyweight division almost always promises- in terms of action and excitement- what only the lesser weights deliver.

 

Wladimir's 'problem' is that when someone comes along who makes the curry too spicy, he can't tackle it.

There is an inherent problem inside him with handling adversity because he is a boxer from the amateur mold that operates at best when he's getting his own way. He lacks the fire in his belly and it's plain to see.

When someone's is putting him on the back foot, pressuring him and asking him to pull a few tricks to turn the tide all his +'s dissolve and he does not have the answers.

He has been dispatched by not even classically good fighters, but just game 'level C's'.

Wladimir lacks that authoritative distinction & belief that kills his chances of ever really looking like the heavyweight champion of the world. His performances are synonymous with a new employees actions, afraid to do anything wrong.

 

How can you say that? Thompson did pressure him and asked him serious questions, and Wlad came out on top with a one-punch knockout. Peter pressured with with total disrespect for his power and Wlad came out on top.

 

Is not that Wladimir is flat out incapable of handling adversity, but his style suffers when forced into chokepoints.

Wladimir did well to overcome Peters, but the fight proved a showcase of how vulnerable Wladimir is and how linear a fighter Peters was - it was ugly stuff.

 

Yeah, well that's not what you said earlier. You said "when someone pressures him, put him on the backfoot and asks him to pull a few tricks to turn the tide, all his +'s dissolve and he does not have an answer". He was pressured, he was in a nasty situation being knocked down twice, and he did turn the tide.

And as ugly as it was, he still dropped only two rounds out of twelve, with two knockdowns caused by illegal punches, and he came back to beat the **** out of Peter, whose chin has not been the same ever since.

 

There's one thing that I've noticed about Wlad...although, admittedly, not quite so much these days.

I think he's had problems defending not just against southpaws, but from the left in general. Mercer busted him up with his jab (although he took heavy punishment in return). Brewster stunned him with a jab-turned-hook in the third round, and started his comeback with a left hook in their first fight. Sanders obviously had success with the left hand, and, Williamson did a decent job of blinding Wlad with his jab as well.

Wlad still moves back in straight lines, so if you can get him moving back by feinting a right hand, and follow up with a hook, you may well be able to do some damage to him.

 

True, but it does not tell you the full story.

Larry Holmes was floored by Ernie Shavers and then got back up to grind him down - did Wlad do the same kind of thing?

Two cuffs put him down and then he almost willingly dropped to the floor for the third knockdown as if he believed he had already taken too many clean shots for his standards.

In between the inaccurate swinging from Peter was a vice-like clinch he had mastered to help plaster up his mental demons and inability to get his man on a leash like Lewis could do to a better fighter in David Tua.

That fight was just an exhibition that demonstrated how incomplete as fighters both were/are. You had Wlad who should have commanded the fight without a problem, and you had Peter who could not finish anything that Wlad's mental demons allowed him to start.

Messy stuff.