as for quality opponents, although it really depends what you mean by quality :S I would say the following have some good quality, in my uneducated opinion, I do watch a good few heavyweight fights though..

I'd say, povetkin and haye are at the top, povetkin had an excellent amateur career(olympics,euro and world champ) and has dispatched some competent contenders too, byrd, chambers, polish guy wawryk(i hate spelling there names :S),charr, chagaev and takam, none of those fellows are elite class but povetkin beat them all and usual in style too, I do think if povetkin was an american or from blighty(don't want to sound like the fellow who claims fighters are only liked because they are black, as that is bollocks) but I think he would be close to being a superstar. just based on who he has beaten and how. It is hard to say how good haye actually is as a heavyweight due to his cherry picking of opponents but I think he certainly has a lot of quality and was very quick in his fight with wladimir.

I would say chagaev has quality too, another decorated amateur who defeated ruiz and valuev(closely in both), chris byrd was no mug either, pulev had acumulated a nice record too, Ibragimov had a nice amateur career and beat shanon briggs(who some say should get a shot at wlad now :S) and a past it holyfield but holyfield did show afterwards that he had something left when he had his close decision loss to valuev.


so errr i forgot what i was typing.. I would say the quality opponents wlad fought are

povetkin
haye
chagaev
ibragimov
byrd
pulev
thompson
chambers
brock
sanders and brewster too,even though he lost I like those guys a lot
and possibly sam peter.