Riddick Bowe Vs. Wladimir Klitschko

Klitchko has far better technique and much harder to hit.

 

yeah.. jab and grab by Wlad.. Bowe would punch Klitschko off of him.

 

Giant squid vs sperm whale. All that grappling will just delay the inevitable and the squid gets overwhelmed more often than not.

I'm not writing Wladmir off, but best vs best this is an ugly matchup and I can't see Wladmir winning with his usual tactics in any universe. Bowe can jab with Wladmir, and he had plenty of size and strength to get out of the clinches.

 

This. Steward-era Wlad would make Bowe work some for the win, but as good as the former was I don't see him making it 9 rounds.

 

Makes zero sense to bring up the Golota fights. They were literally at the end of Bowe's career when he was completely shot. Watch those fights compared to prime Bowe and you will see how badly shot he was. Listen to Bowe talk to today and it's easy to see that he was already suffering from CTE when he fought Golota.

 

Only a year after he stopped Holyfield = completely shot? OK.

 

He was. His defense was nonexistent and he was off balance everytime he threw a punch. Listen to him talk today and realize he only fought a couple of times after that. He was damaged goods and shouldn't have been in the ring. He was never the same after the third Holyfield fight.

 

The Bowe from the first Holyfield fights is a handful for anyone and for me beats a prime Klitschko in a war.

 

One guys textbook perfect uppercut staggered Holyfield all over the ring. The other guy hit his own face when he threw an uppercut at Brian Jennings.
Riddick KO3. The last thing you want to do if your weak chinned and prone to panic under pressure is get into a hugging match with one of the all time best inside boxers

 

The Povetkin fight was an absolute disgrace and a stain on the sport. It's a bit depressing and comical at the same time that anyone can view that level of illegal, panicked hugging and it's tolerance by a crooked ref (used pretty much any time that Povetkin tried to punch) as some sort of superior, admirable technique. It made Akinwande's effort in the Lewis fight look like Boromir's final stand in The Lord of the Rings.

It's ultimately hard to know how Wlad would do against a lot of skilled infighters h2h due to the above 'tactics' being wrongly indulged by the house refs for the entirety of his reign. An impartial ref holding the approach to account against Bowe might put Klitschko in an uncomfortable, panicky situation.

 

I couldn't agree more with these sentiments. It was probably the single worst display of fouling (available on film, at least) ever displayed by a heavyweight champion.

And to think that Wlad's fans (albeit more those within the 'Kult of Klitschko' bracket) consider the win over Povetkin as one of his best and often hold it up as an example of his alleged supremacy.

I once saw it described as "a masterclass in old school rough house tactics."

Any Referee worth his salt either changes the shape of that fight by moving swiftly from warnings to point deductions, getting Wlad to cut it out, or else DQs him.

If anything, that awful performance confirmed what a lot of people already thought about Wlad, if he was ever faced with anything like a half-decent opponent who came to fight.

Bowe was helluva lot more than half-decent at his best and, at his most motivated, would have been looking to plow through Klit the Younger.

 

Bowe was a joke who was great for one night. Wladimir was an ATG with one of the longest reigning win streaks in heavyweight history. I'll take the second guy thanks.

 

The fact that Vladimir was so huge and strong and skilled, yet had to Resort to such schoolyard clutching tactics - there's no excuse for this, and no way for a heavyweight champion to conduct himself.

 

Yep and bowe was shot because he went to war with a Warrior that he massively outsized and got Punchdrunk from it. Very clever fighter was Riddick Bowe! Lol

 

1) Wlad is far from the first boxer to over-use the clinch. Guys like Hopkins, Ali, Johnson and of course Ruiz would be a LOT less highly regarded had they not been able to hug their way to wins.
2) Bowe was one of the dirtiest fighters around. Have people forgotten his rabbit punches and ballsack-busting escapades so soon? Jeebus, he couldn't even deal with featherfisted Pierre Coetzer without pounding the family jewels to dust.