I've just rewatched the fight and the stoppage was premature

[leppard365]

only 1 of those punches landed and the rest Wlad brushed off.

Benefit of doubt should have been given to a legendary fighter that has had 69 fights over a 27 year career.

And I'm from the UK and was rooting for Joshua.

[hugh grant]

All I can say is wlad has got off floor to win before. Many times he has looked vulnerable but prevailed.
Maybe ref should have let him get nailed to floor as wad is coming to end of career anyway. So it's not as if he was protecting the rest of wads career.

So it's always best to air on side of caution. I'm sounding confused

[QballLobo]

I disagree, ref almost stopped it after Vlad wasn't responding to him after the 8 count. I thought he was done. Ref did the right thing. 15-20 years ago he may have let the fight continue but not now. It was just a matter of time. Vlad was eating too many clean power shots to continue.

[.:: JSFD26 ::.]

I disagree, ref almost stopped it after Vlad wasn't responding to him after the 8 count. I thought he was done. Ref did the right thing. 15-20 years ago he may have let the fight continue but not now. It was just a matter of time. Vlad was eating too many clean power shots to continue.

Wlad only took about 3 shots in that whole sequence and one of them was a body shot.

I'm not calling the stoppage premature nor have a problem with it but I think it should had been let to play out a little longer.

[deathofaclown]

It was a fair stoppage i think.

Wlad does often look more hurt than he actually is by the way he reacts under pressure.. but it's quite easy to see why the ref jumped in.

I said he might have seen out the rest of the round as the round was nearly over and Joshua might have been gassed going into the 12th but really it wasn't a bad stoppage. The man was down twice and then under real pressure on the ropes, if he had taken a big shot again and got flattened before the ref jumped in then people would be saying the ref let it go too long.

[Mike Haynes]

No one is saying premature stoppage until after seeing the replay. He just got floored twice and was under serious fire. The ref did the right thing. One more big shot could have been critical. This isn't a video game.

[leppard365]

No one is saying premature stoppage until after seeing the replay.

I initially thought it but got carried away with the celebrations so let it go.

Having seen it a second time I'm certain.

Premature stoppage.

[TX_BOXNG]

Maybe a tiny bit premature, Klit was about to escape the ropes, but i felt it was still a fair stop, Klits legs werent there anymore

There under contract for rematch lets see if it goes thru

[HarvardBlue]

The ref gave him 2 opportunities to turn the tide around and he was stuck in the corner with a 250 pound man throwing fight ending punches at him. What did you expect the ref to do? If that was Joshua you would be saying the ref saved his life.

I'm not buying this fake outrage. Let it sink in. Klitschko lost. It was a heck of a fight with impressive performances from both men. No controversy here.

[FeFist]

Ref made the right call. He was in a similar position to the time he got dropped for the third time and unable to keep Joshua off him.

If it continued, he would have been knocked out cold.