Biggest improvement seen in a fighter over short period of time

Be it changing trainers, maturity, weight class or whatever else you attribute it to.

Name some "before and after" examples of boxers who seemed like nothing special and then became serious contenders/champions

(not talking about Buster Douglas types who had one great night)

 

Juanmug :kidcool:

But really - Pacquiao and Martinez spring to mind. Maybe Ward too? Or Ward could just be a case of a guy fighting to the level of opposition, rather than drastically improving.

 

Pipino Cuevas was an 18 year old journeyman who had just lost to Andy Price

Angel Espada figured he'd be an easy warm-up... Cuevas beat him half to death inside of 3 rounds and then made 11 successful defenses, 10 by KO, many of them of the brutal variety

Then he fought Tommy, got killed and was immediately ordinary

 

Good shout. Cucumber Caves was indeed a weird one.

 

Do you think Cuevas was just overlooked and written off because of the loss to Price?

 

At a lower standard but Steve Robinson was another 'journeyman' who came in at short notice for a title shot then went on a pretty long run of defenses. Not a real title and a pretty low standards of challengers, but he sprung to mind

 

Don't make up fighters just to add a reply.

 

I think he was a kid with no hype, started at 14 years old... he'd lost 4 times before Price, wasn't managed or moved in any meaningful way... perhaps he had little confidence? Price was a decent fighter, a ranked fighter... sometimes a guy, especially a hungry kid with nothing to lose, can get keyed up for a title shot and surprise people... Cuevas has always seemed to me like a guy who was just a kid, just older than a child really who got a rush out of the possibility and went all out... probably to his own surprise, he won... and once you win the way he did, confidence is bound to follow... If you look at it, he didn't do anything different in defending the title than he had in winning it... he came charging out and hooked like his life depended on it and it worked out for quite a while before Hearns got to him... he had no chance in that fight, you couldn't dream up a more perfect guy to beat Cuevas

Cuevas is exhibit A for the old adage of a title making a fighter 70% better maybe being more truth than fiction

He's not the same, really, because his craftiness and his skill was well known before he ever held the title, but Joe "Old Bones" Brown seems to fit the bill as well. He always had the skills, he knew every trick, he won more than he lost, but he still lost quite a bit over his years as a contender. He got a chance to fight a weak, gatekeeper champion, Bud Smith, in a non-title fight, beat him easy and then duplicated it in consecutive title fights, battering the guy, schooling him. Over the next 5 years he was a dominant champion, one of the P4P best fighters in the world... he won fights in every way imaginable... he outslicked some guys, he outbrawled others, overpowered some... just a great champion with absurd versatility

Then he fought Carlos Ortiz, who fought about as smart a fight as you can, lost a miserable snoozefest in such a manner that some writers thought he had thrown the thing... all of the sudden, it was back to losing... in fact he had over 40 fights after losing the title to Ortiz, lost more than he won

 

:laughing:

 

::

Sorry.

 

Has to Be Bernard Hopkins, for the Simple Fact that VERY FEW Actually Gives Roy Jones CREDIT for Beating him 8-4, @ WORST....



REED:hammert:

 

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I was going to make someone up too. Thanks for spoiling it for the rest of us, Hut

 

Tim Bradley. He was sort of an ESPN level fighter caught betwixt syles like Oscar Dela Crossdresser. Once he beat Junior Quitter and got the belt he has gotten better in every fight. Once he was called a champion he grew exponentially in confidence.

 

Junior Witter's another guy who's first big fight was a late call up and improved after it (that farce fight with Judah). He seemed to grow a pair and sit down on punches after that, went on a long KO streak, got to world class.

 

Nah, that was clever marketing. Most overrated fighter ever who just had the number of a superior fighter in Morales. HBO crafted his improvement.

 

Vitali. Was floating around in his brothers shadow with a tattered reputation for three years from April 2000 to June 2003. Then everyone suddenly realized the guy could actually fight. In the space of 18 months he had gone from a nowhere man with a tattered reputation to the reigning and defending WBC Heavyweight Champion with genuine recognition as the man in the division.

Ricky Burns- dropped a brace of decisions in the space of a few months to average domestic fighters in 2006/2007 but has been on a steady learning curve since. In 3 years he went from a guy earmarked as a domestic journeyman/fringe contender to a genuine world-level fighter with wins over Roman Martinez and Michael Katsidis, picking up the WBO 130lb and 135lb titles. I am confident he will wax Kevin Mitchell and then move onto a world unification bout at 135. That simply was not on the cards a few years ago.

An awful lot of this is based on perception. A guy can "improve" overnight, but that's just how we perceive it. In reality, they are improving all the time in small, regular increments, proving their worth, but people either aren't watching the fights or aren't following the fighter in question at all, or are being dismissive of their wins.

Vitali was getting good wins over guys who had fought good comp and had a lot of experience- stopping Purrity, Donald, and Bean- guys who were not often beaten and almost never stopped. His chin had not improved at all over that period- he always had one. The perception, in part thanks to usual media nonsense and in part due to fans being lazy, was that he was a soft, chinless eurobum.

Same for Burns- a guy who has quietly improved, so quietly and incrementally that his polished performances vs Martinez and Katsidis came as a surprise to people.

Amir Khan has shown some improvement, going up in weight has improved his ability to absorb punishment, so much so that we could now say his chin is probably one of his lesser worries.

 

Roid ran from the rematch for years and when they did rematch he got schooled.

 

Well, not quite, no. ::

 

Good point of Vitali. He was a better fighter once he lost to Lennox Lewis. The fact he fucked Lewis up and was a few rounds from victory and the fact that Lewis ducked the shit out of him and retired rather than do it again.Lewis' punch on Vitali was just as lucky as Rahmen's shot on Lewis. VK was winning and Lewis was spent. He knew he could hold his own with the best and has been a destroyer ever since.

 

hno: LL was too legit to quit.

 

fighters only improve overnight where we are talking confidence issues. Lewis vs Holy I, Vitali vs Lewis, that sort of thing. Sometimes confidence is the only thing missing and once that is acquired, a dramatic "improvement" is observed.

 

You know, it's ok to have an opinion that isn't extreme hyperbole.

(I'm a confirmed MAB hater btw).

 

MAB was not a great fighter no matter how much HBO says he was. The sheep should never yell out to the shepherd. Lampley and the boys talked about this technically skilled fighter who revolutionized himself. Too bad it only happened against poor opposition and an overrated Hamed. Mab went from being a brawler to a so called technical wonder. He only accomplished being boring over smaller and weak opposition. Hamed was overrated as hell and he had Morales' number. bTW, the 2 fights he did win 1 and 3 were because he brawled and the one he was gifted he boxed. He couldn't outbox Junior JONES! When he was in a fight with a true great fighter in Pacman he lost every fucking round. People go around saying MAB was a great fighter and he just wasn't. A SOLID brawler who was part of the HBO hype machine. He beat one of their hyped frauds in Hamed and actually did have the number of a great fighter in Morales.

 

Glen Johnson

 

Good one.

 

John Ruiz was first an all-around boxer in the top-30 level or so, then changed his strategies and went on to compete on several title fights

 

Cheating while Don King finds you refs out who won't enforce the rules hardly counts

 

I like you, Hut

 

Ruiz won much more than he would have won with his original tactics. Just because his style was Duran-like doesn't make him a bad example to this thread:love: