BoxRec

Similar to some other competitors of his era Valuev was a champion with a relatively decent resume, but it had been built up on terrible performances.

Valuev holds victories over fringe contenders like Larry Donald, Monte Barrett and Jameel McCline, 2-time World champ John Ruiz, World champ Siarhei Liakhovich, multiple World champ and HFer Evander Holyfield. But what's behind those victories? Valuev was outboxed by Donald, but yet he earned a shot with that "vicory" and then had another awarded victory in Ruiz fight. The decision vs Holyfield was no less awful. Even fair and square losses to Chagaev and Haye are MD.

So, in my opinion, Valuev is just disgraceful phenomenon for boxing. He had started boxing, when he was 20, then he started his pro-career. It was in 1993. But he appeared on the higher level much later, when the heavyweight scene was in a visible decline. In 2004 he finally found good promotion, which allowed him to have those corrupt victories over some decent names of his era.

Valuev biggest win is against completely shot Evander Holyfield. The second big win is over John Ruiz, who himself was quite dubious. And all those victories are very arguable, what makes the situation even more disappointing.

And what are your thoughts on this subject?

You gotta hand it to Valuev....he was very tall.

BoxBuzz wrote: ↑22 Aug 2018, 12:10 You gotta hand it to Valuev....he was very tall.

I'll hand it to him, when Fury or Wilder will back me up. Or Vitali... Or Vonda Ward.

The Beast from the East. He seemed a slow starter to me, when he warmed up he wasn’t bad. I don’t remember much about the Ruiz fight. I was at the Holy fight, it could have gone either way. So he was fortunate that time. Be careful of calling him a fraud just because he had a title, with so many titlists you don’t know how where that argument will end.

He was gifted the Ruiz and Holyfield wins.

Outside of that, he was decent. His jab was essentially all he had in terms of offense or defense. The sheer size of the man, though, was such that all he had to do was take two steps and he was right there in front of you. That, in and of itself, gave the appearance that he was doing more than he was, or pushing the action.

He could take a punch. The only time I ever saw him so much as blink, take a step back, wobble, etc was in the final seconds of the last round against Haye.

He had solid conditioning, but then again, he didn't do much in there. Everyone who fought him essentially was running away, wasting more energy than necessary to get away from him. So in a way, guys were beating themselves when they fought him.

Colossal man in terms of size and strength with (yes) some ability and good personal discipline, expertly managed plus some very astute/timely matchmaking..........

.......but ultimately shown-up and deposed by the comparatively tiny David Haye who was only a fleeting player in the HW division himself rather than a HW champion of note.

Haye was dwarfed that night but Valuev was not really able to use his use physical advantages and it was one of Haye's easier nights as a heavyweight.

didn't he retire because of a 'progressive bone disease".
at what point in his boxing career did it begin to affect him ?
(i'm not a doctor but my guess would be around 2007 at age 34 years).

what are the earliest recorded fights of Nikolai Valuev ?
I first remeber see a clip of him on a HBO Boxing show.
He looked unbeatable almost like a James Bond villian's henchman.

rare footage of Nikolay Valuev fighting a an amateur in 1994 at age 21 years ( listed as 6 ft 10" 312.5 lbs)





Valuev's 5th professional fight-October 1996 (this was his earliest fight of his that I could find on youtube)



Here is his 9th professional fight from May 1997.
vrs Terrell Nelson

He was badly hurt in a distance fight versus a novice Euro pug whose name I forget. It went 12 rounds and Valuev was out on his feet at the end, staggering like a drunk after the bell! There's footage of it out there. He looked concussed. And yet he was something like 28-0 fighting a 5-0 guy.

His 13th professional fight-November 1997.




His 14th professional fight-December 1997.
vrs Sinclair Babb

Valuev's 16th professional fight-June 1998.

Valuev's 17th professional fight-December 1998.



His 18th professional fight-January 1999.

his 20th professional fight-May 1999.

( same fight recorded with video-camera from different angle

Tuan_Jim wrote: ↑28 Aug 2018, 18:14 He was badly hurt in a distance fight versus a novice Euro pug whose name I forget. It went 12 rounds and Valuev was out on his feet at the end, staggering like a drunk after the bell! There's footage of it out there. He looked concussed. And yet he was something like 28-0 fighting a 5-0 guy.

Is this the fight that you were referring to ? Nikolay Valuev vrs Taras Bidenko
Valuev's 30th professional fight-July 2002

I seem to recall Valuev winning a fight or two by DQ because of low blows. His opponent was this guy who was 5'9" in height, so it's more than understandable how that happened considering Valuev was 7 feet tall, what were you really going to hit but the body?

looks like Valuev may have been starting to become possibly dehydrated with his fight with Bidenko there.
A Big Man uses Big energy.Any do a punch count on that one ?I wonder if that was the most punches Valuev
had ever thrown in a fight.

Valuev's 32nd professional fight-March 2003. (the video-taped rounds appear to be out of chronologiacal order tho)

awesome thread

awww man, I was trying to post all his fights that are available on youtube in chronological order,so that we here could study and examine his progress as a Boxer over the years and determine just when Valuev was at his peak and the point were he started going South as far as his boxing abilities
.( and stuff like his hair-line seems to have noticably re-ceeded during the Summer of 1998)
( btw the Gaines fight has already been posted in the thread already,it was his 16th pro fight).
btw I jst now came across of Nikolay Valuev fighting as an amateur !
I edited it into the thread earlier right before the video of his 5th professional fight on this thread-so take a look !

33rd professional fight-July 2003



34TH Professional fight-August 2003

35th pro fight-October 2003
vrs Otis Tisdale

This thread seems to be the last word on Valuev's career if anyone were ever writing a book on Valuev (not sure who would want to read it, but I digress) this thread would probably be a good reference source. At least as far as his actual fights go. It's certainly good for the evaluating his career which was the threads intention.

I was never too impressed at all with his skill, but I did think he had surprisingly good stamina for such a large man.

yeah, at first I used those boxing 'career" Dvd's listings that are on sale on the internet as a reference point.
But I noticed on youtube that a number of his earlier fights that were not even listed on his career DVD.
so I typed in all the various names of the opponents from his boxrec listing here into youtube with Valuev's name.
So possibly there may be more hidden videos( or rarely viewed) because sometimes the opponents names are spelt
somewhat different when the video's are posted so they don't turn up in the search.
If anyone knows any of his early fights that arent on here just mention them.
Like I mentioned earlier,I first remember seeing Valuev fight in a short clip that was on a live telecast of
HBO Boxing.the clip was shown during a live fight and I remember Roy Jones commentating how good
he thought Valuev was,but I cant remember when exactly when it was I saw this,maybe around 2002 ?
maybe it was on a HBO Boxing show telecast from Europe or possibly it was a clip of his fight with George Linberger at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City ?
BTW Nikolay Valuev published his autobiography a few years ago,but its only available in Russian language version.

I used to talk to Linberger back in the day. Was funny how I got ahold of him. He wrote in to KO MAGAZINE challenging Scott LeDoux to a fight because they did an article on "The Fighting Frenchman" where he said Butterbean was a fat slob pretending to be a fighter and that alot of his wins were dives.

Linberger took exception to the comments cus Bean beat him in the past. And KO MAGAZINE had his email address published right in the issue. Really nice guy.

i was kinda surprised watching some of his earlier fights, not saying he was nimble or really skilled or anything, but he looked like a reasonably decent boxer who was much quicker then he was later on. he definitely really slowed as his career got nearer the end, a lot of guys slow down but it seemed really pronounced with him, i wonder if related to his condition

btw about the holy fight, a lot of ppl say it was a robbery but theres a pretty healthy crowd who didnt. for example graham houston, boxing monthly editor and longtime boxing writer who is well known as impartial, thought valuev won. i did watch it a few months ago and holy started really well but threw almost nothing in the second half and was almost just solely moving. valuev to me won a number of those rounds pretty much just by steadily jabbing. tbh i think a draw wouldve been a really fair result.

i actually think hes underrated if anything. seems consenus is that he was some type of joke fraud freakshow, but imo he really wasnt all that bad. he did have stamina and chin and his straight punch game is actually not bad. to me he was never a really top boxer but he was defo an actual boxer first and not some freak who they just put gloves