No HBO for Klitschko

[Zilla]

I personally would have liked to have seen Ben Wallace as a heavy. 6'10", 240, always in great physical condition. He would have mauled people.

[generalbulldog]

Can you imagine Shaq fighting? I know it's laughable as the guy can't fight worth anything, but if he'd grown up doing it he might have been a monster. What was he, 340 at his biggest in his prime? He would have killed guys with his jab alone.

No I can't imagine Shaq fighting. I think Angelo Dundee said it best that the best HW's usually don't have much mass because with that much weight they are slower and lacked the lateral movement inside the ring, plus he also said something that made sense, in that the muscles requires a lot of oxygen to operate and that with that much weight they tend to tire easily. If you look at Lennox, Klit brothers, and HWs that are very large like that they tend to have a fighting style that are more conservative and not wasteful of energy. This makes a lot of sense. He said the perfect HW build would be around 215-220 and around 6'2" to 6'4", any taller or bigger then they won't have the agility or stamina to be that effective.

[eagleskins]

It's laughable when people say American HW's are in the NBA or NFL. No they aren't. Tom Zbikowski, maybe. Have you ever seen NBA fights? None of those guys can fight at all. If anything, there might be a couple HW's in the NHL, but not in any other sport.

[Hulk]

True there aren't any heavyweight greats coming into the division anytime soon....I have high hopes for Deontay Wilder but he's 24 had only 8 fights and he's really raw. The heavyweight division imparticular goes through ebbs and flows of talent rich and talent deprived eras as well as action rich and action deprived eras and right now I see the lack of intrest in the division more as #1 nobody thinks the guys in the top 20 can beat the Klitschko's right now and #2 the personalities in the division aren't electric enough to keep the attention of the average sports fan.


I will say this, both the Klitschko's have been dominant enough to be compared to what other Great heavyweights have done but their opposition lacks the danger and their fights lack the drama that the likes of Lewis, Holyfield, Holmes, and of course Ali/Frazier/Foreman faced. It's not 100% their fault...they have to fight who is out there and right now it's not a lot. I'm surprised they can keep their focus

Its partly Wlad's fault that this fight is not going to be televised. I'd dare say mostly his fault.

Tyson could fight fucking Peter McNeeley and it was PPV ! lol

Wlad keeps winning, but he really has a safety first, methodical, boring style.

And when you combine that with a boring opponent, then nobody wants to see that.

[El Kabong]

...well in all honesty Wlad-Chambers is Wlad-Byrd III and we've already seen how that ends. I will say I had more of a problem with the Ruslan Chagaev fight not being on HBO.

So Wlad is "safety first"....he's not blessed with Evander Holyfield's chin, why wouldn't he try to protect it? It's not like he doesn't throw AND LAND a bunch of punches...it's just he stiffles his opponent's attack unlike a defensive fighter that will either block or avoid punches, Wlad just keeps you at arms length OR tied up, there's no inbetween and that's part of the reason why he's so successful