VIDEO: For those who STILL believe Hamed was great...

Bravo for being objective, and not a hamed groupie :bears:

I agree with you. First that it wasn't close at all. In all honesty I felt generous giving hamed 2 rounds, I think there was only 1 round he won clearly, I forget which one. Round 3 maybe? I can't remember, I'll watch it again sometime.

I also agree that hamed was never BADLY hurt or close to being knocked down or stopped.

I never suggested he was.

He was stunned lots of times, and certainly hurt a bit, but when I said barrera could have stopped him if he stepped it up, what I really mean is that barrera never even got out of 2nd gear. If he'd have stepped it up, and REALLY attacked hamed when hamed was vulnerable, I think he could have got a stoppage.

 

maybe, but he fought like that for a reason, if he had stepped it up he would have left himself open to massive counters.

 

Exactly (what I just said):bears:

 

I never said it was close, MWS. Said it was competitive. Big difference. Ive seen 120-108 fights that were competitive and Ive seen close-ish fights that weren't particularly competitive.

I think if he had stepped it up and really attacked Hamed there was a good chance he would have gotten the stoppage, yes - there was also a very good chance he would have gotten knocked out himself - and he knew it. He fought smart.

I'm not denying that Hamed looked awful in that fight, btw. But you would have to also admit that he looked equally awful in the Sanchez and Calvo fights and that being the case can you honestly deny that Hamed was a faded fighter when he faced Barrera? Thats the whole basis for my defense of Hamed. I think he was a better fighter than we saw in the Barrera fight, that's all.

 

Spot fucking on. The funny thing too is how badly the people at HBO and publications like Ring magazine wanted so badly for Hamed to be great. The Ring had him listed in their P4P lists way before he even proved himself against anyone.

I still remember the first time I ever saw him fight--after having heard all the hype surrounding him--I was totally unimpressed. I didn't understand the Muhammed Ali comparisons and wondered where was the speed they always talked about because the guy didn't look fast at all to me.

 

Same with me.

The first time I saw him fight was sometime before the Kelley fight, and he stopped some clubfighter in two rounds. Even then, he looked terribly sloppy and amateurish, no less than he would against Barrera years later, and in every fight in between. There was no "decline" in Hamed before he fought Barrera, he ALWAYS looked like shit.

 

While I think some parts of this post may be extreme, it is fundamentally true, especially the part I highlighted.

Hamed made a career out of waiting until a fighter had looked old or shopworn in recent fights, and then fought him (ie: Tom Johnson, Kelley, Vazquez - and Vazquez was about 104 years old anyway), and none of his opponents had been as good as Barrera was to begin with anyway. He even tried the same trick with Barrera (who looked sluggish against Valbuena), but realized he had misjudged after seeing him against Salud. Both Hamed and Manny Steward KNEW they couldn't beat Barrera if Barrera wasn't shot, and that's why they spent so long bullshitting before finally entering the ring, and why Steward had no real advice to offer Hamed other than, "Try not to flop around when you're getting hit... it's making you look like you're getting beat worse than you really are." (::) The longtime charade was finally over, and they both knew it.

And yes, he had the mentality of a journeyman both during and especially after the fight was over.

 

That's true too, Barrera was a career junior featherweight before that. If I'm not mistaken, he beat Hamed in his first serious attempt at moving up in weight.