Things not thread worthy

[blackbelt2003]

Wlad's entire 9 year reign was never over a massively deep division, but at least early on he had a modicum of half decent and fairly skilled combatants to choose from, such as the aforementioned Calvin Brock, a still-close-to-prime Sam Peter, an in-form Shannon Briggs, undefeated Tony Thompson, Sultan Ibragimov and more.

But after the David Haye fight in 2011, the standard dropped noticeably. I'm not even sure it's up for debate, yet you guys insist on mentioning contenders from the 2000's, when I've clearly referenced the 2010's and named some of Wlad's challengers in that period, such as Alexander Leapai, Francesco Pianeta and Mariusz Wach. Two of them, just a few years later, were non-title, mismatched tune ups for Fury and Whyte, yet in this period were actual, real world title contenders.

Those guys were awful. The division was awful. Just take a peek at The Ring's rankings for 2013 and 2014.



On another note, I can still remember the 90's heavyweights being shitted on. I can distinctly remember (amidst what we now know was a heavyweight golden era and second only to the 70's in terms of depth and action, with the Bowe-Holy wars, Tyson, Foreman's comeback, Lennox Lewis et al) people bitching, moaning and complaining how bad the heavyweights are, how Larry Holmes would have kicked all their asses on the same night, and how this Lennox Lewis fella wouldn't even have been a contender in the 50's.


Black