Fights which you heard were great. Watched them and wasn't impressed all that much. Do you have any ? I would say Foreman Lyle for one. It was good but was expecting something really great.
Most all-out slugfests are overrated in that sense. That is because watching them live the excitement is such great and in makes the experience stronger. When you know what will happen, there is not much to see in them. Fights where fighters show more skill and tactics are more worthy in rewatch sense. That's why.: Foreman-Lyle Ike-Tua Gatti-Ward I Tyson-Holyfield I (not so much a slugfest than a clinchfest actually)
Holyfield-Tyson 1: This actually won 1996's Fight of the Year over Barrera-McKinney, Gatti-Rodriguez, and Bowe-Golota 2. Kelley-Gainer 1 and Liles-Littles 2 were also superior fights. Gatti-Ward 3: This won 2003's Fight of the Year over Gomez-Arthur and Toney-Jirov. It was an entertaining enough fight, but not FOTY material, nor was it especially competitive. Gatti won by a wide margin, with a broken hand. De La Hoya-Quartey: I hear people talk about this as some sort of "great fight". I even read an article where someone had it in the top 5 WW fights of the last 30 years or something. Did people actually watch the fight in full? It had two exciting rounds, and ten rounds with WAY too much posing and staring and not much action.
Running the risk of being called a fool, I think Hagler/Hearns was a bit overrated. They were two great fighters; the action was intense but definitely, in my opinion, not one of the greatest fights of all time as I hear so often. Hearns had a broken hand and Hagler was just too powerful for him. The same leather that plastered Duran was not going to work on that night. Also, the Ali/Frazier TRILOGY...... Only TWO of the fights were worth talking about!
wow you all suck. Holyfield-Tyson is the only one that even remotely qualifies, so far... and even that is mostly overrated if you watched it after the fact, like someone who didn't live thru it or understand it
Trinidad vs Vargas is overrated to all hell. Basically, Vargas got the shit kicked out of him, barring one instance where he had Trinidad down with a nice counter left hook. Apart from that there was a lot of mediocrity, Vargas coming out greener than an aphid, getting nailed and sent to the floor with an ease not becoming of any great fighter. The fact that Trinidad was a notoriously slow starter didn't help any. Lots of fouling, by both fighters, thumbing from Vargas and low-blows from Trinidad. Vargas slowed down badly from the 9th on and took a pasting in the 12th, some really poor officiating there from Nady. Vargas was never ever close to winning it, with the benefit of hindsight. Throw in the fact that Trinidad may have had illegal wraps and it sort of compounds the matter for me. At least in fights like Cooper vs Holyfield, Cooper vs Moorer, Lyle vs Foreman, Vitali vs Lewis, Sanders vs Vitali, Kelly vs Hamed, etc, there was always at least one moment where you were sure, absolutely sure, that the eventual loser could pull off the shock, turn it around, etc. In Vargas vs Trinidad? Never happened. It was exciting in that there was drama and knockdowns, but it was low on quality throughout, and Vargas always seemed to be well contained.
Trinidad-Vargas is an incredible fight. Great ringwalks, great staredown, mex vs pr, then epic give and take fight with skill.
Trinidad vs. Vargas is a classic....the build up and the actual fight was everything DLH vs. Trinidad was suppose to be. Vitaly could NOT put away a worst version of Lewis than Rahman fought in Africa.....and Vitaly vs. Sanders? REALLY? ::
Classic Mexboxing.com mentality. I don't give a fuck if it was Hispaniola vs Cuba in a winner-takes-all Banana Fest.
You are taking liberties and deliberately moving away from the very particular point I was making. The caliber of the fighters here is not and should not be a determining factor. Nor, for that matter, did I say that Sanders vs Vitali was a "great fight". Where did I say that? I merely brought it up as an example of a key element in any truly great fight- where the loser looks like he might just turn it around. The capacity and talent of the fighters is, for openers, subjective. It is also irrelevant. If it was that important, then Gatti vs Ward wouldn't even be on the table for discussion. When Vitali fought Sanders, there were at least two occasions when, albeit momentarily, it looked like Sanders might just make it, might just turn it around in his favour. Same with Cooper vs Holyfield. Holyfield looked like he might just blow it, he was reeling around like a drunk and was all over the place. Frazier vs Manuel Ramos might be another. Ramos was a bum, a relative outsider, but for one moment it looked like he might have had Joe going. Barrera vs McKinney and Trinidad vs Vargas lacked this element. I think a critical element of any great fight must be that the eventual loser did find themselves, at some point, on the cusp of victory. McKinney and Vargas never had that cusp. Oh, sure. McKinney did floor Barrera, and Vargas did floor Trinidad....and Barry Jones floored Freitas when they fought too. Did that make them great fights? No. Neither Jones, McKinney nor Vargas were every really close to winning. They kept it close on the cards, played their parts in entertaining fights, but were ultimately not close to winning. When Wayne McCullough fought Morales, Morales admitted after the fight that there was a point that he, Morales, feared he was going to lose. We didn't detect that watching the fight, so we might rightfully pass it off as not being truly great, despite what Morales himself feared. I remember following the RBR for Vargas vs Tito on secondsout.com- I think you may have done it. I distinctly remember you pointing out that by the 9th round, Trinidad looked like he had far more energy than Vargas. It wasn't exactly knife-edge stuff, instead it was reaching an inexorable conclusion, as Vargas basically took a hiding down the stretch.
I think it was around round 5 or so when Vargas absolutely boxed Trinidad's nose off and had the KD a round or 2 before. I didn't feel like Vargas was out of the fight until the end.
Good call. In De La Hoya vs Vargas, we see Oscar start off really well, and then get trapped into the ropes and bashed. It looked like Oscar was about to go out of the ring. The only point I knew that fight was OVER was when Oscar rocked him at the end of the 10th. Between the end of the 2nd and the end of the 10th, nobody could have been sure. Compare that to Tito vs Vargas- where it was obvious a lot earlier, perhaps as early as the 1st round but definitely as early as when Tito got off the mat and skipped gaily to a neutral corner, that Tito was never going to lose that fight.
The feeling I got following the RBR was that Vargas wasn't extending Trinidad enough, that Vargas was working harder to get the same effect, and that Trinidad was bouncing when Vargas was slowing down. When I watched it, it definitely seemed that from the 5th on, Vargas had less and less and less to offer, and Tito was just doing what he wanted. Maybe I am being harsh, or too-narrowly defining the matter at hand, but I feel that for a fight to be truly great, both guys need to have had a "match point" at some stage.
Take Kessler vs Froch, or Maidana vs Kahn, or Burns vs Martinez In those fights, distance fights, both guys were on the cusp of victory at one stage or another, right up to the very very end, you couldn't have called it. Those were all FOTY candidates, and all of them had that element.
:TLC: In Vargas vs. De La Hoya after 5-6 rounds it was all De La Hoya it wasn't grand he wasn't dominating Vargas but he was sticking him with teh jab all fight long..and keeping him at a distance. The Last 2-3 Rounds of that fight it was ALL De La Hoya..and it look at that moment that he was going to run away with it. By the end of Round 9 Vargas was pushing Trinidad back with punches and punishing him at the end of the round...and if remember Vargas probably won Round 11....so how in the hell is that fight decided in the 1st round...?
Oh I see. I had just complied a lengthy report on the tape I have of Ketchel vs Johnson. I will delete that now. Sound.:kick: How many fights have we watched live which when revisited, in the cold light of day, have a different effect on us? I am trying to distinguish great fights from dramatic, entertaining events.
I disagree. Vargas soundly outboxed Trinidad in the 5th round. Round 6 was close too, but Trinidad landed a long right hand late in the round that hurt Vargas and had him holding on. Vargas also did some real nice bodywork in the 8th round that seemed to bother Tito.
i was at that fight at staples center. a bunch of yuppies, fake hollywood types, and non boxing fans going nuts for that slop. i was on the verge of leaving the arena mid fight.
