Is underrated. While it's very true that he never beat a great fighter, he did beat a slew of solid/good fighters, and most of them he destroyed. Robinson, Medina, Tom Johnson, Vasquez, Kelly, Ingle, Bungu, all those guys were good fighters that Naz obliterated. Admittedly I think his body of work during his reign is a lil underrated considering the narrative tells that he beat a bunch of stiffs. I think at his peak he'd be live against many excellent feathers in history, save for of course the elites, Pep, Arguello, Pedroza Sanchez, Saldivar, ect.
Naz was a detrained mess by the time he fought barrera, nobody's ever gonna change my mind on that point
Would have liked to have seen Hamed vs any 2 of the following: Junior Jones, Lusito Espinosa, Erik Morales, Kennedy McKinney, Freddie Norwood, Juan Manual Marquez. Shame had to absolutely kill himself to make 126lb because we never got to see what he´d be like at 130. He basically folded after losing to the first good, solid big test he came up against.
I think only hardcore Naz haters believe he was at his best against Barrera. He thought MAB was an easy victim and didnt bother to train. The whole boxing world thought MAB was an easy victim for Hamed. The very best version of Hamed imo was the one who destroyed Tom Johhnson. That was his apex. No, I don't think MAB beats that version of Hamed.
Naz would have done horribly at 130. He was a 5'3 midget. At 130 during that time we're talking about prime versions of Floyd, Casamayor, Corrales, and Frietas. MAYBE Naz would have had a chance against Frietas (I doubt it), but the other three would molest him. He was made for 122-126, not 130. It's not like he had the frame of Arguello and could thrive moving up from feather
Yeah Naz wouldn't have done well moving up. I disagree with the notion that people thought MAB would be easy for Naz though. I picked Naz to win but I thought he'd have to go through hell to do it. Never would have foreseen MAB boxing like he did though.
The overarching belief was that 1. It was believed that the first Morales fight took something outta MAB and 2. It was believed that because Junior Jones knocked Barrera senseless, that Hamed would do the same. VERY few gave MAB a chance. Probably as many as gave Holy a chance in the first Tyson fight.
You know why Riath Hamed chose Marcos Antonio Barrera for the fight in April 2000? The sneaky cunts, ¨felt in their opinion¨, that Barrera had won the 1st fight vs Erik Morales, but used that as a get-out loophole for avoiding Morales. Massive backfire.
When Barrera took apart Jesus Salud on HBO in the fight right before Naz, Manny Steward warned that MAB was very dangerous for Naz. Naz simply didnt listen to him it seems.
Not saying there weren't people saying that in regards to the Morales fight but I wouldn't say it was overwhelming and personally I never understood it either, especially as the vast majority of people who saw the Morales fight had Barrera as the winner. I get your point about Jones though.
Barrera did win the first Morales fight, although I think the "robbery" narrative has become overblown. I only had MAB winning 7-5. But both guys took a lot of punishment.
There's also the Oscar Suarez element, an incompetent mook who presumed to take a totally unorthodox fighter with no real fundamentals, deconstruct him and put him back together again in his image; turning a squared up switch hitter leading with power pot shots into some mangled karate stance mess trying to work methodically behind a backhand slap of a jab.
Oscar Suarez ruined Frietas as well. Before he got ahold him, Frietas was a destroyer and one of the biggest punchers in the sport. Suarez had him "boxing" a lot more and Frietas stopped committing as much on his shots and became less effective. Ya gotta allow pure punchers to be who they are imo. You add some tweaks to them, sure, but you don't try to turn Mike Tyson into Willy Pep. Suarez couldnt grasp that concept.
I'll concede that a weakness for Naz is that he lacked ring IQ. He fought purely off instinct, not thought. It's cool to be a fighter with great instincts, but every great fighter has to be a thinker. Ingle obviously didnt teach guys like Hamed and Graham that this is a thinking man's sport, which Cus and Rooney definitely instilled in Mike from the start.
Hamed lost cuz of his allergies he trained in Vegas at that prince ranch, but was allergic to the desert
Yeah...Jim Lampley pretty much asked Naseem Hamed a week or so before the fight “did you pick Barrera because you thought he was shot after the Morales war but now you’re having second thoughts after how good he looked against Salud?” Naz sort of laughed it off and said “what are you trying to say?” but it was pretty clear what Lampley was implying.
MAB was overrated as fuck. After the Naz fight and the Morales re HBO crafted this angle for him as a former brawler who refined into a master boxer of the highest class and order and people really bought it and some still do. PAC really arrived as a star when he exposed MAB as being a borderline elite guy but not a special fighter at all.
