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as far of him appearing to fight so tense through much of the fight, and it causes him to gas early, and fade in the later rounds? he is in great shape, no question about that, but he does appear to tire in the 2nd 1/2 of the fight, mouth open, and more clinging. this is not a flame, just something i noticed! it was not so apparent in the iggy fight, but saturday it was more so apparent.
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Probably, he does seem tight and nervous the first few rounds so it's very easy to tire once you lose the nervous energy which is what I think happened in the Brewster fight but I think part of his stamina issues earlier in his career were due to him being part of the Soviet Union when he was a kid, they couldn't turn pro so they probably trained their maximum for 3 round amateur fights, it probably took him a while before getting used to going longer than 3 rounds. -
yeah you may be right about that for early on.
it seems if he fights a guy who will go after him he gets tense more so, and burns alot of energy. it's wierd. in the iggy fight he looked great for all 12 rds. he was movingaround the ring beautiful, and was very loose. than against thompson he was tight,and got winded.Comment
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Wlad is extremely tense and tight in there, I agree. It has to zap his energy.Comment
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Frank Bruno was a perfect example of that too, he was ripped, a really great physical specimen and he could **** too, BUT he was too stiff and the muscle mass he carried meant that like Wlad he started to gas during the latter part of fights. Also like Wlad he was both scared to get hit and seemingly unable to apply the necessary pressure to kill off an opponent for whatever reason.Comment
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I dont know about that. From a tactical standpoint this fight was very interesting. Wlad usually dominates opponents with the jab. He hurts with it.
Wlad couldn't get the jab going with any consistency, so he changed his tactics relying more on the right hand. Classical stuff in the sense that the best weapon against a southpaw is the right hand. So the good thing, from Wlads perspective, was that he proved he's not one-dimensional and he showed the ability to change tactics during the course of the fight.
One more observation I had was that the cut might have bothered him. I seemed to me that he kinda ignored the body of the very slow Thompson and one explanation I can think of is that he wouldn't expose himself to counters to the head while going to the body. If you guys got anything else on the cut and lack of bodyattack I'd like to hear it?Comment
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Valid points Bat but for me, although i could see that the cut affected him the strangest thing for me was the fact that Thompson really looked like he didnt want to know, even his corner were shouting at him to get his head up and "have you come all the way for this???" etc. IMO Thompson was so one dimensional that Wlad couldnt really fail to look good. Even before the tumble which resulted in Thompson hurting his leg he looked seriously like he couldnt be arsed at all which IMO is wrong when you are challenging for supposedly the biggest title on the planet.Comment
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I hate to says this, but I dont think TT's heart was totally in this fight. He was so way behind in this fight and IMO he didnt do enough to even TRY to win. I hope someone can convince me otherwise, but I think that if the fight had been close he would have got up from the KD.Comment
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