Where do you rank Wladimir Klitschko currently amonst list of Heavyweight greats?

Don't be a ****ing idiot Dino, I've told you this enough times that you should know it, and if you don't, please write it down and display it at an appropriate place close to your computer:

It has nothing to do with what I can or cannot see. It is to do with the fact, almost universally recognised by fighters and even all but the most deluded "fans" that the rules are enforced by the referees, not the fighters. If grabbing is good for a fighter he'll do it unless the referee stops him. The notion that he "should have been disqualified" and so somehow the win "doesn't count" is ludicrous. The referee decides the limitations of the rules, not you, not even the corner of the offended against fighters.

It's fascinating to see heavyweight fanboys/haters squabble in the dirt over officiating. You don't get it at other weights (Floyd/Pac aside). After Mares-Agbeko I 90% of the hate was gunned at the referee (Correctly). It's only heavyweight obsessives that try to change the reality of a result in favour of/against the fighter in question.

Someone should really do a study on these poor people.

 

Only in the opinion of about a quarter of boxing fans on this site.

That'd be much higher on a German language website of course, and opinions vary, but steady yourself. If Wlad retires without being stopped again he's going to be ranked 3-15. That WILL happen. Get down on your knees and pray for a saviour or ready yourself.

 

No, you have it all wrong. The rules aren't the rules. Yes, very well, is something called "boxing rules" and they exist in isolatio but the rules are enforced by the referee on any given night and they inarguably vary. You cannot apply them retrospectively outside the referee-fighter relationship. You can express an opinion about that referee if you like. THIS IS NOT UNUSUAL. It is true of the police and judges. Official that have MUCH more important jobs than boxing referees.

This unevenness is why we have "bad" referees, "good" referees, referees who "let the fighters fight inside" referees who "stand for no nonsense" etc etc etc inargualy, beyond all hope of contradiction, I am completely correct in this assertion, you are wrong.

This is the basic problem when it comes to your particular delusion vis-a-vis Povetkin-Wlad.


Now, before someone wanders into the thread and says "yeah - but that referee was shocking", note that I am not arguing that particular point.

Yes, especially the dominant boxing and committed training produced by Wladimir himself.

Yes. Almost inarguably. Wlad, like, say, Miguel Vazquez, likes to hold. Of course he "feels out" the referee's tolerance to clinching in the first round. Of course he did. Same as Holyfield did with coming in low with the head against Mike Tyson. When fighters find out that their pet foul is tolerated by the referee they continue to use it until they are warned, same as Mares v Agbeko, or whichever one of the thousands of examples you might care to mention.

It's obvious, and it's only delusion and paranoia that makes you even ask.

how do you know? What an arrogant and preposterous claim. So bizarre.

of course not. It's a learned skill. For another great example see Lennox Lewis. He wanted to hold and lean against Mike Tyson. After multiple warnings from the referee he abandoned the strategy, or at least augmented it to keep it in line with that referee's tolerance. Inarguably. On film. Something you have tried to claim in this thread is IMPOSSIBLE for Wlad. Worthless offerings.

:rofl of course it is. Even fighters who don't clinch practice clinching ffs.

Please don't waste my time with bull****.

Prove it. What is your proof for this.

Because if you have none - you either have to accept that every bad refereeing performance is the result of corruption or withdraw you remark. There is no other choice.

I think you probably mean far less? But yes, fighters have been DQ'd for doing worse things than Wlad did. That might be the first indisputably true thing you've said in this thread.

So what? Wlad's looming ATG status isn't based upon what he didn't do, but what he did do.

Dino, you are to Wlad what Jews were to Hitler. What technology is to the Amish. What New York is to Jihads. Your opinion is the MOST EXTREME OPINION POSSIBLE of Wladimir.

You can't really expect anyone to take you seriously?

 

I agree. I think 10-15 is about right right now.

 

If you like, but it's a pretty meaningless statement because they will be different from fight to fight and:

Wlad broke the rules. Dozens of fighters do so. But like most fighters he sought where the line is drawn and then inhabited that fight to that line.

Good. Did his job. Bad for the spectator but absolutely normal and no different to dozens of other examples in existence.

That IS the "feeling out". Break a rule. Was I warned? No. Break another rule. Was I warned? No. Break another rule. Was I warned? No. Willie Pep, Muhammad Ali, Sandy Saddler, Andre Ward, Lennox Lewis, Wladimir Klitschko, Bernard Hopkins, Evander Holyfield, Harry Greb, Jack Dempsey, Sakio Bika, Henry Armstrong. Al of them. They all did it.

The variable: the referee.

"You're not in there to play the piano" - Fritzie Zivic.

When Zivic fought Billy Conn one ringsider noted that the two of them used "everything but knives" to try to hurt one another. They held, butted, elbowed, threw.

Do you seriously think that years later someone was bleeting about how terribly unfair it all was to Zivic, who lost? Of course not. Grow up.

Sure, but YOU'VE implied that you know for a fact that if the referee had gone in round one "no holding", Wladimir would have left the ring/continued to hold and be disqualified. Which is ridiculous, sheer nonsense.

That was years and years and years and years ago. Wladimir bombed out Pulev in his very last fight without over-using the clinch. There's a plan B right there. But in your deluded state you refuse to even acknowledge that such a thing possibly exists. You have ruled out, entirely, the possibility that Wladimir could have done ANYTHING but clinch or get knocked out against Poevtkin.

Could he knock him out? Because it certainly wasn't clinches that sent him to the canvas those times.

Wlad uses clinches to control contests. The idea that without them he could not do so is clearly incorrect.

 

Absolute nonsense. The second round had 9 or 10 clinches. Of these, Wlad initiated either 8 or 9. But in 3-4 of those clinches, Wladimir and Pulev were exchanging punches. They were infighting. Tony Weeks took the decision to separate those clinches.

There were perhaps six clinches in that round that were not contested and even here it is not unusual for the referee to warn the protagonists to begin to fight rather than separate them.

"Punch or get out!"

In the first minute of Pacquiao-Hatton there are five to seven clinches:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6zX-aYlKN4

Many of them are contested and the referee allows them to work out of at least two. Two aggressive, forward thinking fighters who are much smaller and much less vulnerable to counter-punching while withdrawing but they manage a comparable number of tangles. Claiming that Pulev-Wlad has more clinching than "most guys had in their whole careers" is pathatic mis-representation.

No.

He has huge power, good speed, a jab rated by fellow professionals as world class, height, reach, organised footwork and a booming right.

I'd say it's you who needs to re-watch Klitschko fights, but what would be the point? You can't see them anyway.