Vitali Klitschko 2004-5 status in your eyes

Lineal champ? No. #1 HW? Yes.

My understanding is that a boxer can attain lineage under either of two circumstances:

1. Beating the lineal champion;
2. Winning a #1 vs #2 fight in the instance the lineal title is vacant;

If you believe the same, then the sole question is how you determine the rankings. I base them on the Ring rankings and iirc, which is no guarantee, Vitali was #1 and Byrd #2 when the former fought Sanders.

 

Lineal is such a nebulous concept I truly don't like it I just prefer looking at who's the best fighter in the division at that point. But I think it was pretty clear he was the number 1 after giving Lewis a handful forcing him to retire and then beating Sanders who beat his brother. No one else was really at his level at that point until his brother came along and beat Byrd of course.

 

He was the heavyweight champion with whatever label you wanted and the Don King champion was the leader of the G League.

 

That pretty much sums it up in a nutshell.

I don't know any record that holds Vitali as a Lineal champ.

The next to be anointed, after Lewis, was Wlad, some way down the line.

However, this is where it gets a bit blurred, with some declaring Wlad Lineal after Chagaev - Others only recognizing the new lineage, after Wlad/Pov.

 

Yes. I consider him lineal champ until his first retirement. At the time Vitali v Sanders was the logical fight to make for the title. It only becomes a problem later on because of Wlad.

What confuses me about this situation is people acting like you need 1v2 to start a new lineage. And that 1v3 is somehow illegitimite if its not 1v2. Theres no precedent or for this idea it just pops up during this incident with people acting like its a sacred tradition. No it just came out of the blue. Before this there had been 2 new HW lineages that hadn't been determined by some form of tournament.

5)Maher v 14?)O Donnell
1)Johnson v 5)Hart

You don't even need to have 2 top 5ers. Fact that gets overlooked is its not even possible to make a match stronger than 1v3. You can only do 2v4 which wasn't done. There was no alternative HW lineage in 2004 people just wanted Vitali to fight Byrd instead of Sanders. Vitali would retire but fighting 3 instead of 2 doesn't put an asterisk on a title. He could hae fought 2 later.


The source I use for rankings integrates HW and MW for its early HW rankings and only provides a full ranking for the end of the year. So I made an estimate for O Donnell.