Vyacheslav Valerievich "The Czar" Glazkov

Always wondered why he never came back after operation. Kind of strange in fact.

 

I thought the injury ended his career?

 

He had two other somewhat controversial fights. Some thought Cunningham beat him, and I can't remember the other...probably either Adamek or Rossi. He also was one of those guys whose fights would quietly fall through on the day they were supposed to happen, and I am thinking specifically of a Sam Peter showdown.

Basically, NOTHING ever went right with this guy, and I don't miss him. I much more miss Sultan and wish he was have taken a stab at cruiser.

POST SCRIPT:
Martin was winning before the knee blew out.

 

Someone mentioned somewhere that he used his Martin payment to buy a truck and went into self-employment. Knee was pretty bad .. ok for truck driving but not so good for top level boxing. I think ... this is something I recall from years back, could be wrong.

 

I was at the Martin fight. Crowd boo'd the **** out of him when he tried to say his punch did it

Reminiscent of Valuev-McCline

Czar had promise though I remember him getting a gift or two. Good enough to be ranked but doubt he would have hung around with the fighters coming up

 

Bang on the money.

 

I remember the Malik Scott decision being controversial

 

Oh, it was.

NBC Sports Fight Night: Vyacheslav Glazkov vs. Malik Scott RBR | Page 22 | Boxing News 24 Forum

 

For me, Czar Glazkov will always be the poster boy for the sanctioning bodies' clumsy attempts to gain control over the sport. Fans just want good ratings. The sanctioning bodies aren't satisfied with that. They want power.

Glazkov was a classic, but not unique, example of the sanctioning bodies trying to flex their muscles by stripping a new champ after a huge win "under the guise" that they're just adhering to some freaking rules they arbitrarily make up, depending on who has the belt.

The first time I saw it happen in real time was when the WBC stripped Leon Spinks after he beat Ali and gave their belt to their #1 contender Ken Norton, because Spinks agreed to a rematch with Ali.

Of course, Norton immediately lost the first time he got in the ring with belt, to Larry Holmes.

Then the WBC demanded Larry Holmes, who was trying to put a unification together against Coetzee, vacate if he wasn't going to fight their #1 contender Greg Page (primarily because the WBC didn't recognize or rank fighters from South Africa, which Coetzee was, and didn't want the possibility of a South African winning their belt). So, Holmes vacated.

In Page's next fight for the vacant belt, you guessed it, he lost.

The WBA has had a long history of stripping Hall of Fame heavyweights. They stripped Ali twice in the 1960s, for agreeing to a rematch with Liston and for not entering the US Draft.
(Their top two contenders - Terrell and Mildenberger - couldn't even get out of the quarterfinals of the WBA's own elimination tournament.)

The WBA also stripped George Foreman (after his historic KO of Michael Moorer) in 1995 because he wouldn't fight their #1 contender Tony Tucker.

Of course, Tucker lost his vacant WBA title fight to Bruce Seldon. (Because that's what you do, you take the belt off a Hall of Famer because he won't fight a guy who can't beat Bruce Seldon.)

But not having stripped a champ in a handful of years, the WBA jumped in and demanded that newly unified Lennox Lewis fight John Ruiz in his first defense in 2000.

Both Lewis and Holyfield agreed, before their unification, that the winner would fight the WBA's #1 contender Henry Akinwande next, but Akinwande got hepatitis. So Lewis signed to fight Grant in his first defense. The WBA swapped out Akinwande and replaced him with John Ruiz. Days before the Lewis-Grant fight, a judge ordered Lewis to fight Ruiz or forfeit the belt. Lewis vacated.

So, Ruiz fought for the vacant title ... and, of course, lost to the guy Lewis just beat (Holyfield).

The IBF also stripped Foreman in 1995 for not agreeing to give Axel Shulz a rematch. (But not before the IBF president took a bribe to allow Shulz to fight Foreman, and took another bribe to move up Frans Botha so Botha and Shulz could fight for the vacant title.)

Not wanting to fail tradition, Axel lost back-to-back vacant title fights to Botha and the man Foreman KOed, Moorer.

The fact that the IBF also stripped Tyson Fury 10 days after he beat Wlad Klitschko because he didn't immediately agree to fight the IBF's #1 contender Czar Glaskov next was enraging enough.

I don't know if anyone was more qualified to challenge for the title in that moment than the guy who had reigned for a decade.

But the IBF was in love with Glazkov. (Or payoffs. Or the IBF president was in love with Kathy Duva, Glazkov's promoter, take your pick.)

So, of course, Glazkov fought for the vacant IBF strap and ... as is the pattern ... LOST to Charles Martin.

And Glazkov never fought again.

But the IBF wasn't finished.

As soon as Usyk and Fury signed for their unification, the IBF agreed to recognize the winner but said they wanted the winner to vacate or be stripped if he didn't fight their #1 contender Filip Hrgovic next.

Usyk won the unification, vacated the IBF strap because he had agreed to rematch Fury.

And ... not to break tradition ... Hrgovic got brutalized and stopped by a guy Usyk had just defeated, Dubois.

The sport doesn't need any more Glazkov's. The sport doesn't need champions being stripped because sanctioning bodies want to pretend they are in control and know what's best.

If you repeatedly stripped Hall of Famers like Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Lennox Lewis and future Hall of Famers like Fury and Usyk, in favor of people who weren't even good enough to win their vacant belt ... you aren't doing what's best for the sport. Stop!!

Let the fighters win and lose titles in the ring.

 

Solid if unspectacular fighter.

 

He probably reinjured it but didn't bother to alert the press. Once a knee goes like that it rarely ends up well.

 

He was unlucky. But even without his injury not sure at all that he will win against Charles Martin for the IBF World Title. So I will just say that he was unlucky and that his style was more successful in amateur.

 

Zhang was a better amateur than Pulev