Was just watching some fights of his today, hadn't done so in some time... the man was an artist, brilliant... I don't want to take anything away from Sandy Saddler, he beat him 3 out of 4 and maybe he would have always done so... but it shouldn't be ignored that the guy didn't fight Saddler until after he suffered major injuries in a plane wreck... Before that he had lost just once, on a close decision to a full-fledged lightweight (Sammy Angott) ... He was 134-1-1 going into the fight with Saddler... outside of Saddler, he defeated every notable featherweight of the decade from 1940-1950 It interests me that for years, Pep was talked about far more than Saddler and a small minority of people would often lament that fact... I think over time this lead to a kind of reactionary sentiment where it became di regeur to say that Pep was overrated, to focus attention squarely on the Saddler fights, to talk about him past his prime taking a dive against Lulu Perez (while never possibly giving any credence to the rumors surrounding the first Saddler fight) ... etc., etc. The fact is that if he isn't the greatest 126 pounder of all time, he has to be one of the top three or so
He looked like he could throw punches despite both of his feet being off the canvas at the same time. He loses to Terry Norris though :nono:
I saw some B&W footage of him back in the day, and he seemed to be moving about on some sort of an air cushion, he moved effortlessly, punching as he did. Great fighter. Did you hear about him when he was a trainer??? Or the joke he supposedly cracked about Cleveland Wiliams??
he had some similar moves to Whitaker, but he tended to perform from more of a long range... but he had that same uncanny ability to lead his opponents to a spot and then suddenly he would seem to materialize on the other side of them... Whitaker did it at close range, Pep did it with more of a dancing rhythm Good call on the air cushion... indeed, it looks like it should be impossible for him to throw punches, but it works As for the story, I recall John Garfield telling a story about Pep and Williams working out in the same gym and Pep making some kind of complimentary joke
LOL What is noteworthy is that he did legitimately win the round in question without throwing any POWER punches (something he himself alluded to in the wonderfully entertaining book "In This Corner!!!..." - everyone should read it)
He also said Cleveland Williams had a big black one that he would hate to have "dropped" on him. He gets a bonus point for not being a gay black-cock fetishist. :rock1: In addition to this, he expected every fighter he trained to be able to fight like him and if they couldn't he would bawl them out and berate the shit out of them and call them bums. ::
Ted Williams had a similar method as a baseball manager... apparently, players not being able to aquire .500 on-base-percentages was something he could not fathom::
Yeah, Cobb was a shitty manager to. That's why great players rarely make great Managers/Coaches/Trainers
People often under-estimate how significantly diminished Pep was by his injuries. His record post-crash belies this. Yet, when faced with a legend of similar repute, he fell three of four times --- & I'm of the opinion that had more to do with the injuries than it did with Saddler. Still, any fight between would be fairly open in predictions. I still think Pep has him --- & any other FW, without exception --- licked on his best night, however.
because so many guys since him have been able to duplicate his moves and skills... everybody fights like him now in the modern glossy world:wack:
?? I was agreeing with you that the man was skillful. But to address your point: No two fighters fight exactly alike. However there have been many fighters since the 60s with equivalent defensive skills: Ali, Whitaker, Jones, Mayweather, Benitez, Nunn...but this was virtually unheard of in Pep's day.
according to whom? There were defensive gurus long before Pep-- Rosenbloom, Loughran, Freddie Miller... there were defensively outstanding contemporaries -- Angott, Conn, Walcott There were defensive gurus after him and well before most of the guys you just mentioned-- Harold Johnson, Nicolino Locche, Luis Rodriquez There have always been great defensive fighters... Pep has had few equals before him and few after... none of the guys you mentioned, with the possible exception of Whitaker (and even that is only a mild resemblance at best) , defended in a manner anything like Pep, totally different styles... your obvious allusion is that Pep was only successful because he was doing things that "modern fighters" now do regularly... this is simply not true... Defense wasn't invented in 1940 by Willie Pep... I haven't seen any other fighter who boxes in the same manner (Miguel Canto is probably the closest match to Pep's style) as him... his moves are not part of some standard routine repertoire of defense He was every bit as singular and unique as Jones, every bit as different and great There are but a handful of featherweights ever who I think could take him at his best, and that has as much to do with styles make fights as anything else...
Walcott and Conn were as defensively genius as Clay, Mayweather, Whitaker? You've lost the plot! Locche, yes.
Absolutely they were (certainly they were as good as Ali) Whitaker and Mayweather were better than Ali, Walcott or Conn,,, by a long way Whitaker was better than Mayweather, IMO Harold Johnson was better than Ali, clearly... he was a walking encyclopedia of defense The bottom line is that you always make the same mistake... you assume that somehow boxers didn't figure out how to box until 1964 when God sent Cassius Clay to die for our sins... :notallthere: Fuck, Michael Nunn was a left-handed Willie Pastrano with more power... all legs and jabs... 20 years separated their careers... You would think that Willie Pastrano would have gone 100-0 in his career what with all of the primitve cavemen around in those dark days :Lok::Lok: Willie Pep should have gone 242 and 0 in his career, since he was from the future fighting against the cro-magnons:shit: The guys like you around here can not handle the idea that Ezzard Charles exactly as he was in 1947 beats every light heavyweight and super middleweight on earth as they are in 2011 half to death... you cling to the idea of boxing eternally evolving despite all the obvious evidence to the contrary... boxing isn't an organized, regulated sport with a league and guidelines and consistent methods of measurement and specialized training... In boxing, people becoming larger than they have ever been or being able to run faster than ever thanks to special diets, great drugs, etc. means almost nothing because boxing doesn't involve running... you don't tackle someone in boxing, you don't use a ball... at the end of the day, the same qualities that made or broke a fighter in 1945 are the same ones that would make or break him today (although this is becoming less meaningful as fewer and fewer skilled fighters are being produced with each passing year, now replaced by the leap amateur and the nervous, tense, fast haymaker/hold -- the "athlete" boxer) ... You can be the fastest runner on Earth, the strongest weightlifter... none of that matters if you can't take a punch, don't have good instincts for fighting, lack toughness, don't understand how to move your body as a boxer... guys like you are hung up on the evolution of the athlete, failing to realize that boxing has never really been about that almost every guy Niccolino Locche was in the ring with was stronger than he was, hit harder than he could, many were "faster" than he was... at the end of the day, they'd lose 9 out of 10 rounds against him because he knew how to fight more than they did Willie Pep was in there consistently with guys who likely trounced him in most "athletic" measures and it didn't matter, he still wound up 230-11-1 Roy Jones's athleticism helped him to fight the way he did, but that doe snot mean that ANY GUY with similar athletic gifts could do what he did... Jones knew HOW to fight, he had the instincts for it... his moves were certainly not conventional but they were carefully thought out... Jones didn't beat guys with ease for 10 years because he was living in the 1990s instead of the 1940s, he didn't do it just because he was athletic (that was just one tool among many that enabled him to do what he did) ... he did it because he was good at fighting I never saw a guy with better timing at close quarters than Julio Cesar Chavez... but I have seen about 100 guys who were clearly A LOT faster than him Who do you think is a better "Athlete", MIchael Grant or Mike Tyson? If you were choosing a basketball team, a track team, football... you'd pick Grant in a heartbeat... But what would happen if they fought, both at their best? Tyson KO1 that's what Willie Pep in his prime could beat every featherweight on Earth right now
