Perspective on Wlad, and the HW division

I think people break it down by decades for the sake of convenience, but the heavyweight division will typically turn itself over approximately every five years. 75-79 wasn't nearly as good as 70-74, for example.

To keep things in perspective, look how few fighters last the entire decade at a world-class level. Here's a list of the fighters who've been world-rated by decades at both the beginning and end of it:

1960's: Sonny Liston, Henry Cooper
1970's: None. (Ali did run from the early-60's to late 70's)
1980's: None.
1990's: Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson
2000's: Wlad.

That's it.

While a decade is ultimately an arbitrary cutoff point, the fact remains that it's rare to see someone with decade-long staying power, and even more rare for them to be doing it at a championship level.

A heavyweight era certainly isn't a decade long. The majority of contenders ranked now and that Wlad's been destroying weren't even pros when he first got the belt in 2006.

 

People talk like Vitali didn't clean out a good portion of what was left of the HW division after Lewis retired.

 

Not really. Holmes dominated the first part. Then retired. Then Tyson dominated the latter half. There was no level opposition in the 80s like you saw in the early half of the 70s.

 

90's yes 80's hell no 00's hell no unless you like Ruiz Byrd and Brewster holding belts while avoiding each other.

 

Wlad proved to the American audience tonight he is an awesome champion, very very few men in history could have repeatedly floored a beast like Pulev. I know Pulev is no slickster but he is a 6'4.5" 240lb man with high pedigree. I think Pulev will be back, let's see Wilder or Jennings against him.

 

Loudon, for a poster who usually makes a good deal of sense, you've talked more than a fair amount of shyte in this thread.

For starters, whether someday goes life-an-death with a more obscure challenge on a given night says little about them overall.

Frazier went life and death with Bonaveno, and Frazier is still a top 10.

Povetkin would be a serious contender in any era, Huck notwithstanding,


But to the main point. You're complaining that Pulev (and Wlad's other competition) are not ATGs. The man can only fight the best of his era. He can't fight the Fraziers and the Marcianos and the Listons (and I'd pick one of those to beat him, one to lose, and one to be a 50/50).

Pulev was the top contender and the third best HW at the minute, and Wlad utterly dominated him and laid him out.

A year ago, he dominated Povetkin and a couple of years before that, Haye.


Which of Tyson's scalps was an ATG (Holmes was coming back from retirement) ?

Lewis had only Holyfield. None of the rest were ATGs.

Marciano only had an old past-prime Louis....



Each of them dominated their era for a longer or shorter time.

Wlad has been the dominant HW for the past eight and a half years, with the possible exception of his Brother, for paortions of that time.

The truly dominant HWs make the lesser boxers look poor by comparison.

Other than a few fanatics, I don't believe most over-rate Wlad on here.

IMO, he can reasonably be placed just inside the top 10.

 

Wlad is still ridicuosly underrated.

He belongs there up with the greats.in no particular order.

Yes,the division is not the strongest now.however,Wlad is so great that he makes them all look really bad.

Really hard to say where this era of HW's stand.Wlad is so dominant.

And of course most of his challengers have come from europe/eastern europe.americans like to hype their fighters.and that creates an illusion that they are great.

 

Title changing in a circle jerk is not always a sign of strength. It just means the top guys are competitve with eachother. Does't mean the era is good necessarily.

There was a period 2005-2006 when the HW belts were being exchanged at a fast pace. Valuev, Brewster, Briggs, Liakovich, Ruiz, Chagaev, Byrd, Peter, Toney all held a belt for a few months. Does that mean that short period was strong? No it was utterly weak.