Is Vitali Kiltschko an all time top 10 heavy weight?

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When you look at that you see a guy who was no better than the likes Pinky Thomas , Tony Tucker , Jerry Coatzee , Joe Bugner , Henry Akawandie.
All those guys were beatable and some of them had a higher ceiling skill-wise

 

There's no counter points in this post. See , i told you you'd go running. .Because your ranking game has to value Stiverne as a great win for Wilder.. That the standard you set for yourself so own it and stop running from it .. lol

 

https://boxrec.com/wiki/index.php/Rules_of_Boxing

"You cannot hit with an open glove, the inside of the glove, the wrist, the backhand, or the side of the hand."
The shot Lewis cut Vitali with was with the inside of the glove, where the laces are.

 

It was ruled a legal punch. There is no evidence that it was not.

 

"Listing guys who declined fights with Vitali or attempted to make fights with him, but lost taking themselves out of the picture gets one no where."

Certainly a different view when evaluating Vitali compared to your view in evaluating Joe Louis.

 

Hindsight is always 20/20, but I remember Grant was being hyped as probably the greatest ever because of his size and athleticism. Of course we now know this was crazy, but it was the thinking of the time.

 

So he only fought three men who were ranked top five. That is very slim. Even granting the Wlad effect, there were four more positions allowing men to be rated in the top five.

Personally, my top criteria is beating the best and Vitali fails that test.

Looking at the older champions, I can't put him ahead of Jeff or Johnson, nor Louis or Marciano.

But I think there is a case for Vitali being ranked ahead of Dempsey and Tunney on resume.

Of course, on h2h, I would rank him much higher, but h2h is, after all, guesswork.

 

That's a bit high. I have him trading places with Bowe regularly at no. 15 ATG

 

When ranking a fighter and comparing him to the best of his division all time, it isn't unusual for his best wins to be appraised from an historical perspective. That's why multiple posters have cited Vitali's relatively weak resume, despite the fact he beat multiple world rated fighters. His best wins from an historical perspective, relative to fighters in contention for a top 10 HW all time ranking, are lacking.

Given your predilection for appraising wins based on rankings (and there's nothing wrong with that) and given we are ranking from an historical perspective, I decided to do a little random research. I collated my top 20 HW's win/loss record against boxers appearing on:

1) Rummy's HW boxing survey - 24 posters from this site gave their top 15 HWs of all time, which yielded a combined 27 names -

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and the 1st two hits when I typed "Top 50 HWs of all time" into Google:
2) https://www.sportbible.com/boxing/n...ights-of-all-time-have-been-revealed-20200830
3) https://www.givemesport.com/1547377-the-50-greatest-heavyweights-of-all-time-have-been-named

The list from the 24 posters on this site is very strong, aside from 3 fighters who only received 1 vote. The other 2 x top 50 lists are more questionable, but my including them is completely random & if anything they're slightly biased towards modern eras and that, allied with extending my search to a couple of lists with 50 names (given we know Vitali never beat an ATG), should have favoured Vitali.

Vitali is literally the only HW on my top 20 list that doesn't have a single win against any of the c.70 HWs listed as the best of all time from these 3 combined sources:

Louis - W10 L3
Ali - 18-3
Holmes - 5-3
Lewis - 9-2
Marciano - 5-0
Johnson - 3-0 (would have been 11-0 had I based it on my top 50, but neither McVea nor Jeanette appeared on any of the lists)
Wlad - 5-2
Jeffries - 4-1
Liston - 6-2
Tyson - 3-3
Foreman - 6-3
Frazier - 7-4
Wills - 13-3 (all 13 over Langford, who was past prime, but again would have been 17-5 had McVea & Jeannette been included)
Dempsey - 1-2
Holyfield - 8-5
Charles - 11-5 (5-4 if only fights contested at HW count)
Sam Langford - 2-13 (all Wills, would have been 16-17 had fights vs McVea & Jeanette been included)
Bowe - 2-1
Tunney - 2-0
Vitali - 0-2

I'm not saying for 1 second that this should be the definitive mechanism for ranking, it's clear I don't think that from the order of my top 20 and if it were the only criteria followed, Vitali wouldn't make the top 50.

I'm just trying to introduce you to the concept, that one factor most people consider when ranking fighters from an historical perspective, is the quality of their best wins from that same perspective.

 

I don't understand Marciano being dragged in. The bottom line is he beat everyone who has any claim to be the next best heavyweight between 1950 and 1955--Walcott, Charles, Moore.

This is not true of Dempsey, who is the fellow I mentioned as possibly being viewed as behind Vitali.

Vitali is not competitive with Marciano on this point. He lost to the two best he fought.

You keep flipping back to h2h. One reason I don't care for h2h is old timers were not living in the same world. Someone like Jeff or Johnson or Louis or Marciano can be compared, I think, to others who grew up in the world of their era, but not to those from decades later. So much has changed--medical care, nutrition, supplements, etc. Just on medical care, the old timers grew up before many vaccinations or any antibiotics. They had to fight off diseases and infections in a way later generations didn't have to and we don't. There has been an explosion in size in all sports. Better medical care has I think much to do with that. And there is more and better food around now. I am old enough to remember what an apple used to look like. Not usually as impressive as what one sees today. So judged only against the opposition of your own time from your own world.