Brian London and Richard Dunn should never have shared a ring with Ali....BroughtonRulesRefuge wrote:- Saw an interview with Chuvalo the other day decrying the lack of excitement.Old bones Ian wrote:One of the problems with todays heavies is they are just not exciting enough, and maybe its because the East Europeon boxers are to safety first in there boxing.
The leading heavyweight Wladimir Klitschko has a 52-3 record with 46 KO's!!!! and been stopped in all his losses, but how many exciting fights has he been in?? A handful , if that.
Same with his brother Vitali Klitschko who has only been the distance once in 36 wins, with records like that they should be exciting the crowds, but they just don't.
Every heavyweight division that ever existed fell short of previous storied eras. That's the nature of bandwagon fans and media who also have their own primes and are challenged by newer generations of fighters.
Some give props to the Klitschkos, but downgrade their defenses. How long would it take Peter, Brock, Sanders, even a past it Rahman to dispose of the gutted Cleve Williams Ali is touted for, or Brian London, or even broke back Patterson who could barely mount a retreat? You don't think Chris Byrd couldn't pick apart Hurricane Jackson, Tom McNeeley, Richard Dunn, Evangelista, Coopman, Leon, Wepner, Scott Frank, Zanon, Marvis, Rodriguez, Ocasio, Bey, and so on?
It's a racial thing this excitement charge. Eastern Euros are incredibly stoic in their culture, and interviewing in a foreign language, they are well aware the English speaking peoples caricatures of Russians, so they speak carefully in a foreign tongue and carry themselves with respect. Ali's act got terribly stale and punch drunk in his comeback, and of course Bowe, Toney, and Tyson hit all time lows. I prefer intelligent gentlemen and sportsmen, not gibbering ME, ME, it's all about ME and my loud mouth and bad manners.
Lewis was criticized in the same fashion as the brothers. Ruddock a club fighter, Tommy the great white dope, beat by lazy Mercer, Grant a glass chin bum, afraid to get out behind the jab against Tua, sparked by clubfighters, no personality, too gentlemanly. He retires, and suddenly he's a top ten all time fighter.
Plop the brothers in any era, and some HOF champs to be knocked off. Ol' Skin & Bones Fitz a storied fighter, but these brothers are the latest in the ongoing trend to superheavies. Patterson the last 190lb champ with every champ since well over 200. Byrd the exception in the era because of skills and reflexes, but man o man did he struggle.
It seems that before the 1970's super fights, people, ingeneral, talked about individual fighters rather than "era's". People spoke of Johnson, Tunney, Dempsey, Louis, Marciano, Liston, Patterson amd then when it got to the 1970's, it became about a scene or an era in boxing. All of sudden, in the early 1970's, you had widespread international support through incraesed telivision audiences, bigger pay purses and the glamour of that period was refelcted by the explotion of American culture around the world. The key ingerdient that brought it all together was the high calibre fighters, each with individulal personalities andf fighting styles, Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Norton and Shavers......
An "era" was set and the heavyweight scene has been trying to compete with that ever since and as time goes by, that period gets better in the minds of fight fans, who perhaps have'nt seen all the fights in full, simply because it's seen as "the glory years". I agree with what you say about the fighters Ali fought, outside of the "elite" fighters and it;s true that someone like a Wladimir Klitschko or even a Frank Bruno for that matter, would have beaten the likes of Dunn, Cooper, Londona and other international fighters like Chuck Wepner and Cleveland Williams.....
To some degree, it is perception and looking at things throug rose tinted glasees, however, i would still say that this generation of heavyweights is weak in comparison to previous era's, especially the 1970's
