Wlad's resume .. Can someone enlighten me?

[Dave Rado]

Wladimir Klitschko has stopped more opponents who had never been stopped before than any heavyweight in history.

He's beaten 7 previously undefeated opponents (Chagaev, Peter, Ibragimov, Brock, etc). Eleven other Wlad wins were over fighters with only one previous loss.

He has 9 wins over world titleholders (Byrd x 2, Peter x 2, Mercer, Chagaev, Ibragimov, Brewster, Rahman).

He has 49 KOs.

He has the greatest number of successful IBF HW title defenses in history.

He has the greatest number of successful WBO HW title defenses in history.

If you add up the win-loss records of all his opponents, they have a better total win-loss percentage than the opponents of Ali, Louis, Holmes and Lewis.

Sadly, there are SOME people who will never recognize him as a great fighter no matter what he does.

Statistics like those are extremely misleading.

Jimmy Young was a superb Heavyweight but had a terrible win-loss record. Same is true of Shavers and others. And many fighters had undefeated records for years simply because they were extremely over-protected. Salita was a bum who was ranked outside the top 50 by boxrec when Khan fought him, but he had a 33-0 record at the time.

Wlad will eventually be recognised as a great fighter as long as he keeps winning and keeps improving. Proof of that is that he has already entered all of the independent P4P lists.

It took a long time before Holmes was really recognised as a great fighter.

But statistics of the sort you quoted won't ever convince anyone who is not already a Klitschko fan.

That said, the overall longevity of his title reign will count in his favour as long as he keeps winning; and so will his exceptionally high KO percentage.