How would Klitschko's career have looked without the use of illegal tactics?

[Elroy1]

Hahaha, still on that one?

Wladimir was ready for Lewis in 2003, was he? Was getting KTFO by Corrie Sanders part of the plan?

No but as an aside, LEnnox never faced Corrie Sanders either.

Judging by the clash of styles attributes, how he caught Wladimir and how he held his own against Vitali, there's a good chance Corrie would have posed more than a few issues for Lennox too!

If WK had gone through Corrie, a Wladimir vs Lennox fight would have materialised for sure.

I don't think he ducked Wladimir, he clearly ducked a Vitali rematch though!

Wladimir was ready for Lennox at that time. **** happens!

[marvelousmatt]

Wladimir Klitschko used to be a great 1-2 puncher in his day. A truly great one. Hammering ramrod jab followed up by a missile right hand. No one can take that away from him.

However, the style he used then got him into a bit of trouble, notably 3 KO losses and 12 KDs by less than stellar opposition, to say the least. No longer the ramrod jab, instead we are left with a pawing pole stick that measures his opponents distance. Universally recognized as a very unattractive style.

Around 2005, after he started with Manny Steward, he started showing consistent illegalities such as holding, clinching, leaning, often more than 15 times per round and more than 100 times in some 12 round fights - even though the opposition were much smaller than himself i.e. Povetkin, Mormeck, Haye, Chambers and others who were held illegally.

My question is, how would his career have fared if he didn't use these illegal tactics? Likely he would have been stopped more times in his career than the 3 legitimate stoppages he already has, but to who and how?


What do you think? Still undisputed champ, occassional champ or merely contender? Was it a case of him just finding his best self, or did these illegal tactics have a positive effect on his career?

I thought that you were better than this Laced. Vladdy KO has 52 KO's. He must be doing something more than holding. Manny Stewart taught him how to fight behind his height and jab. Strategy is a big part of the fight game and Vlad is an ATG at it. Stop hating on greatness.

[champion4ever]

Well I don't buy any of that picture but basically your making excuses for Ali's holding while slamming Wladimir for the same thing on the basis that Muhammad needed to clinch and Wladimir doesn't have to, he does it cause he's reluctant to fight.

Double standard to the limit.

You make no mention of how much stronger and more powerful Wladimir's opponents are now too by comparison to Muhammad's.

You also mention Foreman as if he CLEANLY manhandled his opponents. Foreman's opponents were INCREDIBLY weak. Most of them cruisers whom he outweighed 80% of the time. Ali himself outweighed 70% of his opponents. Foreman's tactic was to shove them away as soon as they came in range. When Foreman came against an opponent nearly as strong as himself he was in a protracted war of back and forth KD's BECAUSE he couldn't keep his opponent off him like Wlad does.

Wladimir was outweighed as often as he outweighed DESPITE being much larger you idiot, check the stats. It's of no SURPRISE that he might need to clinch more. The opponents of Foreman and Ali could scarely hurt their bigger champions, the opponents of Wladmir are easily capable of KO'ing him if they catch him too many times.

THIS^ is what I am talking about. We are today dealing with the hardest punching era the world has seen to date. And the REASON the boxers like Wladimir need to be high on defense is because the evolutionary pressure demands it!

Also as a side note, this accounts for the increased success of chubby HW boxers. The prescence of chubby boxers in an era is a sign of a hard hitting era. Were those less tall, less slick boxers not to be chubby, they would more easily be knocked out!

I noticed you had conveniently omitted the fact in your post that Wladimir outweighed both Muhammad Ali and George Foreman by some 30 or more odd pounds and held more than a 4 inch height advantage over them as well. I must admit it was very ingenuous of you.

[Weltschmerz]

I thought that you were better than this Laced. Vladdy KO has 52 KO's. He must be doing something more than holding. Manny Stewart taught him how to fight behind his height and jab. Strategy is a big part of the fight game and Vlad is an ATG at it. Stop hating on greatness.

LacedUp has been butt hurt ever since Vlad made Haye his b1tch.

[Elroy1]

I noticed you had conveniently omitted the fact in your post that Wladimir outweighed both Muhammad Ali and George Foreman by some 30 or more odd pounds and held more than a 4 inch height advantage over them as well. I must admit it was very ingenuous of you.

Wladimir does not have the LUXURY of fighting someone like Muhammad Ali for one! His opponents are closer his own weight!

Foreman of the 70's is 15lbs smaller than the AVERAGE WK opponent also.

On the thread in the dome you are slamming the former CW's for coming in as heavy as possible as if it's a disadvantage to them.

Now here you are COMPLAINING about the weight/height discrepancy in a hypothetical match up?

Which is it? You can't have it both ways champ!

Wladimir is longer, stronger, more powerful, more athletic and more skilled than Muhammad or Foreman ever were (Foreman 90's might have outmighted Wlad in some ways but he had more problems not to compensate).

Hence why I detest so strongly to WK taking a back seat to these guys in the first place!

[Elroy1]

LacedUp has been butt hurt ever since Vlad made Haye his b1tch.

Yeah, but he's actually a Wlad fan so he says remember

[bojangles1987]

They can lie to themselves all they want, but Wlad's fans know he'd have another loss or two if he wasn't allowed to cheat. He'd still be the best HW, but he'd have another KO loss or two.

[Elroy1]

They can lie to themselves all they want, but Wlad's fans know he'd have another loss or two if he wasn't allowed to cheat. He'd still be the best HW, but he'd have another KO loss or two.

The cheating bit is simply ridiculous, without mentioning other boxers again that ACTUALLY cheat, Wladimir is among the cleanest boxers (forgetting Povetkin).

Umm.. As for the rest, I do believe I DECLARED that Wlad would probably have an extra loss or 2 on his record as you said.

I even pointed out the most likely loss point probably would have been in Peter 1.

Also Wlad would have more early and more destructively dispatched the rest of his opponents too. Which would not have detracted from his standing all that much! Especially since he would have avenged against Peter and still had more real HW fights than any other boxer in history.

[billeau2]

This question is too complex to speculate upon because how could anyone know specifically if one behavoir was a direct cause or not? When studying Vlad's development there are indications that he had to learn to protect himself to keep fighting and not get exhausted, or eventually knocked out. Vlad's biggest problem when he got to Stewart was his inability to set a pace for himself. In a series of him getting beat down he was unable to stop the other guy, who had taken a few punches from Vlad....from hitting him.

Apparently it was decided that leaning, grabbing and pacing himself would enable him to protect his chin and inability to fight at a decent pace for an entire 12 rounds.

IMO Vlad has always been a weak protected fighter. I give Vitali credit, he is a better fighter all round than his brother, but Vlad, while having good punching ability has consistantly shown that against a heavyweight with elite abilities, he would be toast. His chin almost got him stopped against Peter! and when fighting the relatively mobile Povatkin he had to resort to illegal holding.

So what Stewart did was teach the man how to protect his weaknesses and then proudly proclaim "this here sow's ear is a silk purse of the highest quality." I hate to say this but there is evidence that towards the end of his career Stewart became a bit of a shill for HBO and was not above characterizing the Klitschkos as being a lot better than they have demonstrated.

I would say that without Stewart Vlad would have been rightfully placed after his suspect chin was exposed, i.e. after Sander's did him right he would have been retired.

[Elroy1]

This question is too complex to speculate upon because how could anyone know specifically if one behavoir was a direct cause or not? When studying Vlad's development there are indications that he had to learn to protect himself to keep fighting and not get exhausted, or eventually knocked out. Vlad's biggest problem when he got to Stewart was his inability to set a pace for himself. In a series of him getting beat down he was unable to stop the other guy, who had taken a few punches from Vlad....from hitting him.

Apparently it was decided that leaning, grabbing and pacing himself would enable him to protect his chin and inability to fight at a decent pace for an entire 12 rounds.

IMO Vlad has always been a weak protected fighter. I give Vitali credit, he is a better fighter all round than his brother, but Vlad, while having good punching ability has consistantly shown that against a heavyweight with elite abilities, he would be toast. His chin almost got him stopped against Peter! and when fighting the relatively mobile Povatkin he had to resort to illegal holding.

So what Stewart did was teach the man how to protect his weaknesses and then proudly proclaim "this here sow's ear is a silk purse of the highest quality." I hate to say this but there is evidence that towards the end of his career Stewart became a bit of a shill for HBO and was not above characterizing the Klitschkos as being a lot better than they have demonstrated.

I would say that without Stewart Vlad would have been rightfully placed after his suspect chin was exposed, i.e. after Sander's did him right he would have been retired.

Wladimir had never looked like losing to anybody in his first 20+ fights. He gassed against Puritty who he was one sidedly bashing for the entire fight but he gassed because Puritty happened to have among the hardest chins and took it, was more experienced (Wlad had never fought past round 6 brfore because he KO'ed all of his opponents) and didn't pace himself.

He learned how to pace himself. Even Puritty never outboxed him and never won by cracking his chin. These things remained untested.

Up until his 40th+ fight with Corrie Sanders, Wladimir STILL had never been outboxed and never had his chin cracked ever once!

To say there were indications that Wlad HAD to learn to clinch is ridiculous since at this stage Wlad had had more 200+ HW fights than all but a handful of other boxers did in their entire career.

See, the issue wasn't really THAT difficult was it!



The Wladimir with a weak chin is a totally exposed myth. It isn't even possible for the most dominant HW chamo of all time in the hardest hitting era with the most fights to REALLY have a weak chin.

This 12 times KD stuff is obviously hiding the truth.

The Brewster ones can be deleted obviously, the Puritty ones, exhaustion, and several of the others occurred in the same fight (Peter) from which he got up from to win (as with the other opponents)

Leaving just Sanders which accounts for a few KD's in itself, again he got up to be KD'd again and finished on his feet, he can't be penalised for that!

1 fight in which his chin failed him!

In which as you already know, the anvil headbutt!

He took full force punch from Chagaev after the bell and shrugged it off. Thompson managed to connect with some good shots, nothing!