Froch-Taylor appreciation thread

Just rewatched Froch-Taylor. I rewatch it about once a year. I think it's the GOAT fight at 168.

 

Yeah, I rewatch it regularly. It's an absolute belter of a watch. Like Froch himself, it is very underrated.

MTF

 

I like him as a boxer.

 

Yeah, I came to respect and enjoy him as a fighter in the end. I even stopped picking him to get KTFO every fight and made a ton of cash on him to beat that fraud Bute by KO. Intangibles. It's all he had and he had them in spades.

As a pundit/SKY-shill, he's utterly unbearable.

MTF

 

Anyway, Benn v McClellan is the best SMW fight ever IMO, even accounting for how it ended.

MTF

 

Glad somebody knows where I was coming from.

He's utterly intolerable and unbearable outside of the ring.

 

The American commentary is hilarious.

Frank Bruno in the orange suit.

Naz throwing hand signals at the end like anyone gave a fuck about him.

City Boys with the 90s haircut, likkered up, roaring.

And yes, I'll say it, scumbags forced to fuck off and stay fucked off.

 

I love the US Showtime version. Sums up the sheer madness of that fight perfectly. Watching it live, you felt you were watching something you simply don't see more than a handful of times in thousands of fights. A crazy, crazy fight.

MTF

 

Froch: "I could beat both of them".

Froch couldn't beat Toney UNLESS it was the Toney of the Tiberi/Jones fight.

 

He's a complete tool. No question about it. A real fucking melt.

MTF

 

How's Taylor anyway? Still brain damaged and crazy?

 

Which guys did he say that about?

 

Most likely, yes. CTE doesn't get better.

 

But at least he's staying out of trouble no? Last i heard about him he was shooting his cousins or something

 

He’s been arrested numerous times since shooting his cousin.

Unfortunately he seems like a ticking time bomb.

Last thing I could find was him being convicted hot domestic violence back in June.

It did get reduced from felony to misdemeanor.

Jurors find ex-boxing champ Jermain Taylor guilty of misdemeanor domestic violence

Olympic-medal boxer Jermain Taylor allowed to remain out on bond ahead of domestic violence trial

 

I don't know, I'm just saying it's the type of thing Froch would say to himself.

 

Yep. It's chronic. You've got it and that's that, it's getting worse. He'll be 8n a home in a few years. A magnificent specimen of manhood who just lacked the innate toughness required to survive. You see guys like LaMotta or Vito the Mosquito who had none of his physical gifts but had heads of rock. They had lives after boxing. Taylors done. And that's just how it is.

 

I think it's sad because he always came across as a legitimately nice guy before brain damage.

 

I can see the reasoning for it. It was absolutely a great fight, one of the best I've ever seen in any weight class, but it's impossible to separate from what happened afterwards. Especially with how it ended. Personally, I don't like rewatching it, seems almost like watching a snuff film or something, even though he didn't die. Eubank-Watson II would be right up there as well but for the same reasons I just can't watch it back.

 

Agreed, he always came across as a good dude.

 

I'm with Slice. The ending to Benn-Gman is just too hard to watch. The epic ending to Froch-Taylor makes it more rewatchable for me.

The only fight that ends in the tragedy that I can watch is Sugar Ramos vs Davey Moore, only because you never see the tragic event happen. Moore fell unconscious when he walked back to the dressing room.

 

Think of the dogs, X. Think of the poor dogs.

 

It's been mentioned so much in this thread that I may rewatch it today.

I haven't watched Benn-McClellan since probably 2005.

 

Ohhh. But yeah, Toney would've beaten the shit outta Froch. As long as he showed up like he did against Barkley.

 

I get it. It's the reason I can't rewatch Watson - Eubanks II.

Here's the thing. We are all boxing nuts. Boxing, at its core, involves violence. It is the legalised spectatorship of watching two men (can't watch women) hitting each other with the aim of rendering the other unconscious. That is the point of it. The 'hurt game'. The entire point.

I find the end of the fight uncomfortable, but I watched it live in the hope that Benn would hurt McLellan. Obviously I didn't want him to disable him, but I knew it might happen to either of them. I watched Eubanks do that very thing to Watson a few years prior. I'm not going to pretend that boxing is anything other that brutal. It is. I watch it in that knowledge and, for me, a fight isn't spoiled because the ending is brutal.

That might sound harsh, but to me, being a boxing fan, that's what you sign up for.

MTF

 

I understand, and I don't have anything against anyone who still loves the fight, it was a fantastic scrap. I just can't personally, I find it too uncomfortable.

Interesting though that you can rewatch Benn-McClellan but not Eubank-Watson II. Is that for any particular reason? There is a difference for me between the two fights. I think Benn won because of the injury. He was in the fight, don't get me wrong, but McClellan started blinking heavily a few rounds before the end and in retrospect you can see something was wrong. He also didn't get KOed, he sat out the count. Watson on the other hand, from my understanding (and I might be wrong about this so please correct me if I am) sustained his injury due to his neck catching the bottom rope when he went down. He might have been able to recover had he not been so seriously hurt and seen out the victory, but he may also still have been stopped because it was one hell of an uppercut.

 

The crazy thing about the Ramos-Moore fight is that Davey gives a post-fight interview in the ring and he sounds fine. You would have no inkling watching the footage that he would then collapse and die.

 

Same with Kid Akeem.....the guy he fought looked like he'd been in a car accident. Akeem was unmarked. Then he just vomited blood and keeled over.

 

His gumshield was out of his mouth too for large parts of the fight. Not 9n the ground, just not being worn properly. He couldn't breath through his nose. He was in difficulty, early. There's no question of some sudden collapse, just a constant aggravation of a condition he most likely went into the fight with , like a thin skull. The pace and intensity of Benn exposed the fragility. Prior to that the guy was doing people in 1 or 2.

 

Not the Tiberi or Thadzi version. Or the Roy Jones version. I actually think Froch would have hurt the Tiberi version very very badly....but I accept that's not the REAL Toney either.