This would never happen but how about Vitali in the cage ? He and his brother were kickboxers before they were boxers . Vitali is huge so if he could learn takedown defense he would have to be a serious challenge to any mma heavyweight , his inside boxing skills may be questioned but if he got his range with his striking ?
People really won't accept the fact that boxing isn't a hugely effective discipline in MMA, will they?
Too late, like someone said, it would take years of training in grappling for him to be somebody in the sport. He hasn't kickboxed in over a decade and he had all those knee operations. Shogun tore his ACL defending a takedown, Vitali could easily blow his **** out in the cage. Also, it's not just about defending a takedown. He gets put on his back by someone like Brown Pride, Mir or Lesnar, and the fight will be over.
I'd pay to watch Vit vs. Overeem. I doubt Vit has much left in the legs though, so I would see Overeem breaking him with kicks.
well he's big strong a great athlete and a former kick boxer but he would have to learn the grappling and like toney he would find out that you just can't jump into this sport if he does then he better take on low competition and he's old
I'm sure the Dr could learn, perhaps a little quicker than Toney. I think the only thing that would hold him back is his age and body giving in, he's suffered plenty of injuries. Still, why would he want to fight for peanuts anyway. Anyway, he's too old now even if he wanted to or could, never going to happen.
How is he going to learn enough in a few months when the opponent has been doing it for decades? No better chance than the other guy suddenly learning to land punches on Klitschko.
Vitali can kickbox so I wouldn't expect that he needs to work on kicks and checking kicks. He'd just sharpen it up. He could go straight to learn to defend the take down etc I could see him in a Tim Sylvia style but simply much better at stand up.
I think he'd be very easy for an experienced grappler to takedown considering his stature. Once on his back, it's curtains as others have pointed out. I'm actually a big fan of the Klitschko brothers. I think a lot of people are down on them because they're not American. That doesn't bother me. They're very intelligent fighters that use their attributes the fullest in the ring. People say that they're not explosive but they both seem to have quite a few knockouts. But again, I'm a casual fan of boxing so I'm certainly no authority on the subject. I can't believe that Wladimir is dating Hayden. Lucky *******.
James Toney proved that a boxer will get killed in MMA and fast. A boxers stance will not work. I think if a boxer really wants to compete they should work with someone like Chuck Liddel. Chuck pretty much just boxed in his fights. But his takedown defense was great. He was hard to get on the ground. Boxers can compete if they can learn a good take down defense. Shane Carwin is another example. He is pretty much a boxer with a good take down defense. So if a boxer like james toney really wants to compete they can. They have just got to be willing to learn some new skills to add to the ones they already have.
Shane Carwin is a wrestler. 2-time collegiate champ. That's his foundation. Without it he wouldn't have made it past the first round with Lesnar. Lesnar still took him down in the 2nd.
