Fights You Watched Today

Just rewatched Sugar Ramos vs Davey Moore for about the 5th time.

Tragedy aside, what a great fight, fought at a high pace, and at a high skill level. And especially, a great performance by Ramos, which was overshadowed by Moore's unfortunate death.

One thing to note about this fight, the BEAUTIFUL jab of Ramos, really kept it Moore's face all night, often doubling and tripling up on it, and then hooking off it.

Ramos was some technician, but it's a shame he never quite reached this same level again.

 

Watched Vazquez vs Marquez I & II. Both were great but I'd forgotten that II was decidedly better.

 

Ernesto Marcel v Antonio Gomez 1: faultless display from Marcel. He looked amazing here.

Marcel v Arguello:
Cracking fight which showed both fighters' qualities. I thought it was close up to the 10th or 11th and then Marcel got a second wind - mightily impressive.

 

Julio Cesar Chavez v Hector Camacho

A methodical beatdown from JCC, particularly the last 4 rounds. Camacho showed a lot of heart.

 

Watched Morrison vs. Terry Anderson. Morrison struggled with a journeyman here but ended it in style with a murderous bodyshot....maybe one of the hardest ever.

Also watched Foreman vs. Stewart. Man! Foreman's face was mangled as hell with an obvious busted jaw. Even in his second supposedly more relaxed career you could tell Foreman was a psycho.

 

Watched Roberto Duran v Monroe Brooks and Duran v Javier Muniz.

Could only find a version of the Brooks fight with half of the rounds (misleadingly described as the full fight): rounds 1, 4, 6 and 8. Duran looked sharp here and a fully-fledged welterweight against a decent opponent. The body shot that ended it was a peach.

The Muniz fight was a between-lightweight defenses 10 rounder and Duran bossed it pretty much although Muniz gave a good account of himself.

 

Duran/Muniz is another one which reaffirms my position that Lightweight Duran was at his best in the first half of the 70s decade. The ferocity and zeal he fought with in his youth made up for any further technical advancements on his part. In fact, it more than made up for it.

He was either having issues making the weight earlier than people let on, or his now teeming bag of skills and tricks made him lazy. It makes sense. By then he had a PhD in boxing know-how to fall back on if he felt like skimping on training or prolonging the post-fight celebrations. He didn’t need to go 110% in the gym or carry a chip on his shoulder or take things personally against every challenger to maintain his edge. He was a veteran champion. He had the skills to pay the bills now.

Of course people twisted his newfound laziness and propensity for going the distance into a positive. So now you had patient Duran. Cerebral Duran. Duran the master boxer. It was only true some of the time.

 

Interesting points, Pea. It's a fair theory and it may well be true. I'm not sure
I'd read that much into the Muniz fight - he came in at 142, looked soft and fleshy in this one - I don't think he'd trained that hard, at least by the looks of it. Classic sort of Duran non-title performance in this one.

I just watched his first fight with Edwin Viruet from 1975 when he was still making lightweight reasonably easily and it was another non-title fight. It was a stinker. He tended to look less pumped up for those fights than when the title was on the line.

But I reckon by late '77 making weight was becoming more and more of an issue for him. It makes sense - he was now into his mid-to-late 20s, which tends to be when bodies fill out naturally (whether you're a fighter or not). He also met a lot of movers/runners during that period of his lightweight run (Viruet, Bizzarro, Vilomar Fernandez) who were content to try survive in there and do all they could to nullify his offense. By contrast, if you look at his performance in '76 against Alvaro Rojas he looked quick and light on his feet. The difference? Alvaro chose not to run. The result? KO1.

I honestly don't think Duran could have made the lightweight limit any time after Jan '78 and his unification with DeJesus. If he'd had to, maybe he could have shed the pounds to meet Arguello in the autumn of that year but I suspect it would have adversely affected his peformance, which is why I actually give Arguello a decent chance in that one at that specific time.

With the benefit of hindsight, he probably could have moved north of lightweight after he beat DeJesus the first time - he really had nothing left to prove and there was no-one who could really challenge him there, whereas there was Cervantes at 140, which would have been a real pick'em fight in 1975 and Benitez would have been around after that.

 

Yeah, it was a fun theory to type up, but you cut through the BS in quick fashion, didn’t you?

I do think Viruet had Duran’s number to an extent, though. Not enough to beat him, but he just looked like “that guy” for Duran. Everybody has one, even the best of the best. The guy they can’t shake, rattle, or roll over. The one who always takes them out of their mental comfort zone. Helps if they’re a stylistic problem, too.

 

Just watched Eusebio Pedroza vs Royal Kobayashi. One of the few Pedroza title defenses I hadn't seen before.

It looked as I expected. Pedroza took Kobayashi apart in workmanlike fashion, but he certainly failed to destroy Kobayashi the way Arguello and Gomez did.

 

I’m going to watch Duran-Ortiz again later but I figured I’d share this link, it’s surprising quality for a 1975 fight on YouTube

 

The uppercut Duran eventually ended Ortiz with was vicious as Hell.

With Duran's awesome and fluid footwork, he really had no issue with southpaws. Which is why I can't see Pac beating him.

 

Just watched one of Julian Jackson's earlier fights - against Tim Harris.

We often say it, but it's worth reiterating - Jackson was a very underrated technician, and watching his early fights you can see that like many punchers, over the years he fell more and more in love with his power and those skills regressed (on top of his eye problems).

But Jackson in the 80s was one helluva offensive force. Boy I wish Jackson was around today. He would half kill Jermell Charlo.

 

I watched Camacho vs Bakooka Limon fighting for the title stripped from Bobby Chacon. Camacho was too young and too fast for Bakooka.

 

Last night I watched a few fights actually, but among them I re-watched Johnny Tapia vs Roland Gomez.

This fight was the best I ever saw Tapia, and I can't emphasize enough how much better Tapia was pre-four year layoff.

He was so much quicker, and more disciplined circa 1990 than he was in the mid 90s when he came back. He really took Gomez apart is masterful fashion. I uploaded it last night for anyone who hasn't seen it:

 

Must be a Friday night in the feebles house and the missus has passed out on the couch, so boxing is back on YouTube

Seeing McClellan in MM tempted me again to watch to rewatch his fight with Benn. It's hard to watch, knowing what is coming, but what a fucking war this fight is. You shouldn't say it, but you watch Callum Smith fishing for the bell a few weeks back hoping to 'earn' a points loss and compare it to this carnage.

As much as we all hate to admit it, this is the kind of thing that we watch as boxing fans.

Going to watch Watson kick the shit out of Eubanks again next...

MTF

 

I've watched McClellan-Benn maybe 3 times, but the last time was a LONG time ago... maybe like 2004-ish.

 

I just finished rewatching Basilio vs DeMarco II a few mins ago.

Such a great fight.

 

I was a bairn watching it live...14 I think...but it was the fight that made me a boxing fan for life.

The build up was tremendous here. We'd had years of Benn, Watson, Eubanks etc on primetime TV and here was a guy who was going to wipe Benn out in a few minutes. Even ITV said so. 15 million viewers on a Saturday night engrossed. It seemed unbelievable. Yet it nearly happened. But then Benn did what he never did before or since. It was like a phoenix from the ashes.

It is no exaggeration that I stopped learning karate and went to a boxing gym that week. I wanted to learn to do THAT. it was terrifyingly hypnotic. And the fight is a tremendous rewatch. It really is.

MTF

 

The Showtime commentary is better than the ITV version, too.

MTF

 

I'm six rounds into Watson-Eubanks I. Watson is braying that lisping dickhead.

MTF

 

Same as Benn-McClellan.

I haven't watched Watson-Eubank 1 in a good 15 years or so.

But I have not forgotten that Watson clearly outboxed Chritthhh.

 

There is a real disparity in how people view Watson. US boxing fans remember the guy who McCallum outclassed. And he did. That was a beautiful performance from The BodySnatcher.

But Watson was out for a year before that fight and was a five fights a year guy. That wasn't the best Watson in there. A fit and prepared Watson came back and was robbed in the first Eubanks fight. It was headline news here - literally all over the front of the newspapers here. That's the Watson we remember over here, and especially him from the second fight. Watson kicked the fucking shit out of Eubanks in that second fight. Absolutely hammered him. It was a virtuoso performance. Where Chris found that punch from...

The net result is that Watson is a little underrated over the pond and a little overrated here. Either way, he was wasted, career wise. It would have been interesting to see what he would have done, had he won that fight.

MTF

 

Watched Pettway vs. Rosi II. This Rosi dude made like 10 defenses of the title at 154. And I'd never heard of him. Now I know why. He belongs in that thread we had of shitty champions.

Also watched Harding vs. Giovanni II.

 

Gianfranco Rosi was okay. He has a soft spot with me because he beat the shit outta Darrin Van Horn to win the title.

And ahh, you watched the Harding-Giovannini II that I uploaded?

 

Top 10 all-time material that one imo.

 

Yeah. It was yours. Good fight. Good performance ftom Harding.

 

Yeah, the KO at the end was pretty sweet.

 

Just rewatched Honeyghan-Curry. The narrative around this fight needs to change. Drained or not, Honeyghan kicked the shit outta Curry. Don really didn't look that bad at all until Honeyghan hurt him in the 2nd round, and it all fell apart from there.

I've mentioned this in the past, but Curry, for all his talent, was a bit too robotic in the ring and had a terrible tendency for pulling straight back from shots.

An awkward, quick, buzzsaw type fighter like Honeyghan was always made to be nightmarish for a guy like Curry stylewise.

I cant believe that like 15-20 years ago I fell into the Curry myth of thinking he would be a threat to Hearns, Leonard, Duran.

Those three would have absolutely slaughtered Curry.

 

Expanding on that post, I remember back in the day me and Terp used to go back and forth on a Curry vs Quartey MM. His position was always that Quartey would have won, and I always said that's nonsense, that Curry would take Ike apart.

I was too high on Curry back then. If you ask me now, I dont think its far fetched at all for Quartey to beat Curry.

Although, fuckin Dubblechin took it too far and said Thurman could beat Curry. Now THAT'S ridiculous.