It could be rather boring to watch Wlad sometimes.

this one was boring

Looking back at this fight, it was a Russian commentator Vladimir Gendlin-junior who made the most accurate prediction - that this was going to be a pure tactical affair, where neither fighter was going to take unnecessary risks. Ibragimov's game plan was exactly what I expected it to be given the time he had spent with Jeff Mayweather - work behind the jab, slip under Wladimir's left and patiently wait for Wlad to throw that right hand with some sort of regularity and give Ibragimov an opportunity to counter him. Working behind the jab and patiently exploiting openings is basically the core of every game plan Floyd Mayweather Jr. followed during his Money period. The problem, however, was that not only Wlad fully neutralized his jab by the second round, but he very rarely threw his signature straight right, he almost never gave Ibragimov any openings, he never gave him space to attack and never gave him an opportunity to counter him. Basically, he completely neutralized Ibragimov's game plan, and if he lost one or two rounds, it was because he was offensively way too passive sometimes. When I saw Jeff Mayweather almost completely quiet and unable to say anything to Ibragimov, I knew Sultan was in big trouble - first, it's always bad when a fighter is outgunned and his coach doesn't know how to help him, that's basically giving up; second, Ibragimov has always been a very strict fighter - if his coach doesn't tell him to do something, he won't do it. And this was basically the main theme throughout the entire fight - Wlad patiently and cautiously works behind the jab and is unwilling to step up his aggression, Ibragimov tries to slip under Wlad's left and desperately waits for Wlad to open himself up at least a little bit. You can criticize Wlad for his caution all you want, but the final outcome is what matters the most - and why come forward and risk walking into the game-changing counter shot when you can safely cruise to a dominant victory, even for the sake of making the fight boring?

When I look back at Sultan Ibragimov's career, I see a big underachiever. Very few boxing fans in the US and UK remember him, but at the time I considered him one of the most talented heavyweights in the world and one of the best coming from the former Soviet Bloc. In his prime, he was an incredibly versatile boxer - he was equally good fighting as the agressor and counter-puncher, he was dangerous coming forward and moving backwards, he was a strong outside fighter who could hold his own fighting in tight quarters, he had strong fundamentals, lightning fast hands and amazing workrate, and his only weaknesses were his size and lack of better lateral movement. He could've stayed in this division for a longer period of time as one of the top-tier fighters similarly to how his countryman Alexander Povetkin did it. It's really unfortunate that his title reign was quite forgettable (through no fault of his necessarily) and problems with left hand shortened his career. On the other hand, it's still a good thing that he retired when he knew he couldn't give his best anymore, without absorbing unnecessary punishment.