Is Chris Byrd Hall Of Fame Worthy?

If that validates you, sure. Whatever.

 

No he got lucky against vitali klischko who was injured and he was battering byrd he won every round then he said no worth the risk and then byrd got annhilated by ike ibeabuchi who pumped him when he was on the ropes the sweat was knocked flying of him and into crowd lol then he got beat by klitschko brother and he was just never that good wee fella not power he tried to make it negative didnt want to fight he got gift against golota who was past it but better than byrd he was no good thats my opinion

 

That's no reason to continue the trend though

 

Celebheights have Holmes at 6'3 and Holyfield at 6'1.25. Holyfield was making 190 lbs at 25 and was only 202 lbs in his heavyweight debut 3 months later. He was a big cruiser in the 80's but a small heavyweight in the 90's with the likes of Bowe and Lewis around, both of whom were 3-3.5 inches taller and naturally 25-30 lbs heavier than Holyfield.

But it's true that Holyfield is painted as a bigger underdog than he was relative to Tyson or Byrd, who were smaller men than he but never had an extended run in a sub-heavyweight class for them to be judged as sub-heavyweights.

 

Of course. He beat Vitali after all.

 

Boxrec scorers have Byrd winning 3 rounds of the 9 vs Vitali before Vitali quit and Eyeonthering have similar scores, despite the official hometown scorecards in Germany. Compubox had Byrd landing 124 punches to Vitali's 132, despite Vitali throwing 502 to Byrd's 284. So Byrd was vastly more efficient. Perhaps Byrd's evasive abilities and Vitali's frequent wild misses caused him to injure himself. No one forced Vitali to quit and never pursue a rematch with Byrd. It was a stunning all-time "P4P" victory for Byrd, who was never seriously troubled by Vitali at any point.

Ibeabuchi had beaten Byrd (arguably a premature stoppage seconds away from the end of the round) prior to Byrd beating Vitali. Losing to Wlad was no disgrace either, especially considering the size difference. Perhaps a "past prime" Byrd fought a "prime" Golota (a mental basket case who can't stop himself being DQ'd in fights he's winning handily isn't "prime" in my opinion).

Byrd has more of an excuse for being negative than the giant super-heavies who frequently are because he was a 6' natural sub-heavyweight featherfist competing in the land of the giants. If he'd fought them head-on he wouldn't have had any success, he played to his strengths. He's without doubt one of the most skilled heavyweights ever.

Roy Jones vs Tua poll: 21-1 Tua KO

https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/roy-jones-jr-vs-david-tua.690774/

 

That's a big NO for me.

Having lived through it, to me, Chris Byrd was one of the worst heavyweight champions of my lifetime.

He wasn't "great" at anything.

He was also like Charles Martin "squared" in that he won not one but TWO heavyweight titles because his opponents suffered debilitating injuries (shoulder tears) during their title fights that required major surgeries to repair.

I believe Holyfield suffered his as early as the second round and still fought on another 10 rounds.

And I didn't think Byrd won any of his title defenses ... and none of his challengers were all that great. He should've dominated at least one of them.

When Byrd's title opponents weren't suffering major shoulder injuries, it was going to be a controversial, widely booed decision in his favor or a one-sided loss by Byrd.

The Williamson fight was so terrible, the chairman of the Nevada State Athletic Commission went to BOTH boxers' corners during the fight (the boxers were friends and Ratner thought they'd agreed to take it easy on each other) ... and told them both they needed to start fighting or he threatened to launch an investigation afterward as to why they weren't.

It wasn't a good time to be a fan of the heavyweights, let's put it that way. People who complain now have no idea.

Not to mention, he was clearly a steroid ABUSER (not taker, ABUSER, given all the side effects he's now suffering from). The fact that his last amateur fight he was a scrawny 165 pounder ... then he showed up looking like he swallowed an air hose ... and then finished up 12 years later totally deflated looking like the same scrawny boxer against Shaun George, exposed his lies.

To me, Chris Byrd's run as champ was a black mark in the division's history.

 

He's like Usyk. Two peas in a pod. Same blueprint to study. Uncanny that way.

He beat Vitali. He would bewitch and bewilder post-Ruiz Anthony Joshua too, with little doubt. Maybe easier than Usyk did.

 

Pretty sure most of the 90's heavyweights were sauced up at one point in time.

 

Yep, probably right. Byrd was one of the few whose ENTIRE pro career depended on them, though.

You could tell when some guys picked them up. Like Toney was a middleweight and super middleweight champ. By the time he fought Rydell Booker, he was a roided mess. Same with Roy Jones. Middleweight champ. Super middle. By the time he fought John Ruiz, he'd swallowed the air hose, too.

But Byrd didn't go after those belts in smaller divisions. He appeared to immediately start juicing and never even attempted to go after the lighter divisions.

What was shocking against George was not that Byrd lost but that he looked physically just like he did as an amateur.

Toney and Jones never shrunk back down to the 150s again. But Byrd went all the way back down to super middle/smallish light heavy, where he began. And he's back there now.

His entire career was a charade.

 

you cant count that as a proper win mate byrd and vitali the bloke was being beaten and the big ukranian packed it in he wasnt bothered about winning byrd was a poor oponent he wanted bigger fish to fry save the shoulder

 

87-84 was also the mean/median/mode score on fan scorecard aggregator EyeOnTheRing.

 

Vitali was 6-3 up by fan consensus with three rounds to go but he was in trouble. There are costs to throwing and missing loads of punches against a highly evasive opponent and Vitali paid the price with an injury, then he quit. Byrd's defence was a form of offense. Vitali has a massive ego; there's no chance in hell that "he wasn't bothered about winning". Vitali fought plenty of poor opponents in his career so rematching Byrd (his 2nd best opponent) shouldn't have been an issue by that standard. Timo Hoffman and whoever else weren't exactly big fish.

 

Interesting factoid: 9.8 million people watched Vitali Klitschko vs. Chris Byrd on television globally.

That is about the same number of people that illegally streamed the first match between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder eighteen years later. (roughly 3% of that number, a third of a million households, actually bought the PPV).

Ten mil directly contributing to revenue, versus ten mil not. Same level of viewing interest but vastly different rate of willingness to participate in profitability.

Of course, network deals aren't OTT and broadband streaming online was still barely in nascent infancy at the millennium's turn, but ...interesting nonetheless.

 

Vitlai dod not win every round vs Byrd he 6-3 up at best.