A Argument can be made for Benitez! He was the most talented fighter ever. In fact we will never know how good he could have been with proper training and discipline. THe downfall here for Benitez is that other fighters on the list were more consistent.
Yup, like I said in the first reply in the thread. Benitez was the BEST by a distance, IMO. He wasted allot of his his talent and obviously declined at a very early age but at his best he was one of the most talented fighters ever. As I also said, if the Q was who was GREATEST then it becomes a much more difficult question and I would probably lean toward Ortiz.:kidcool: But I take 'best' to mean who was best at their absolute peak, regardless of how long or productive that peak was, and that was El Radar. Cool, didn't know you could do that. Barristan, Godfather, Haymaker, jaws1216, LEGENDARY & mikE are the guilty parties!
I still have a copy of the Ring magazine with an article on Benitez where his cornermen revealed (in a not very cheerful manner) that for the most important fight of his career, against Leonard, Benitez trained only nine days and most of the time he would just escape to the San Juan's disco instead of the gym. It was not a secret that Benitez didn't like boxing. He considered it 'just his job', but had no passion for the sport nor much commitment to training.
Check on Wikipedia there is some info on him and on that incident. What happened was that the referee rule out a cut on Serrano's eye as produced by a punch not a headbutt, and even though Serrano was easily ahead in the scorescards since the fight was stopped due to the cut on the 11 round, the fight and the belt went to villablanca. Upon protests by Serrano's camp the WBA executives reviewed the tape of the fight and found that indeed the cut was produced by a headbutt not a punch, thus they went to the scorecards and Serrano took the decision and title back.
I seem to recall it being more of a scandal and not quite as cut and dry as you are descibing it. Again...just going by what I remember at the time, with Serrano being a thought of as fighter favored by the WBA. How often do appeals actually work and decisions reversed?
Serrano wasn't much good. Fuck he was a boring fighter. Anyone remember his bitch effort vs Mayweather?
I'm stunned! I have heard of his bad training habits but dayum!!!!:doh: This just goes to show he never revealed his full potential, But I think we all can agree to that.
Yeah, Serrano was boring, but he would have whup the ass of most of today's elite at his division. When he fought Mayweather he was already in full decline.
What elite 130 pounders would Serrano have beaten, from say....2004 onwards? He isn't beating Barrera, Morales, Guzman, Marquez, Pacquiao...none of them.
I said the current elite, not the former elite. He could had easily outboxed current champs Jorge Linares, Roman Martinez, Cassius Baloyi and, hell yes, overrated Humberto Soto.
Serrano was a paper champion shit, if you have a hard on for an underrated boricua, why didnt you bring up Alfredo Escalera, an actual champ at 130 and a hell of a good fighter? The real champs when Serrano was "champion" were Escalera followed by the man who beat him, Alexis Arguello Serrano deserves to be forgotten
The collective ignorance of the board is exmeplified by these poll results At best, Felix Trinidad is the fourth greatest Puerto Rican fighter... yet he is in the lead
Barristan, El Terible, Godfather, Haymaker, jaws1216, LEGENDARY, mikE, royyjonesjrp4pno1, TFK. Named and shamed! :warning:
either deliberate ignorance or innocent ignorance to me, you shouldnt vote in a poll like this if you arent knowledgable about EACH fighter
That pretty much sums up what I was remembering about Serrano. He was the "other" champion who was content to make less demanding title defenses and not have anything to do with the best around.
WOW!!!!! Tito is still leading on the poll. Either Cupey hacked the poll and altered the votes or the people who picked Tito never seen any other fighter on the poll. I'm very surprised thus far.