One of the best matchups that never happened... Chandler was inducted into the IBHOF rather quickly for a Bantamweight fighter, it took ages for Pintor to get that honor... The consensus of the day seemed to be that Chandler was the better fighter, or at the least the truer champion... A lot of that is down to how Pintor won his belt, via one of the most contentious decisions of all time in a fight against the great champion Carlos Zarate in a fight most thought he clearly lost. Some of it also may have simply been down to Pintor being yet another tremendous Mexican bantamweight while Chandler had the relative novelty of being an American champ in a weightclass with few Americans. Either way, Chandler overshadowed Pintor as a champ but their respective reigns were of fairly similar quality. The level of opposition in title defenses was fairly even between them with perhaps a slight edge to Chandler. Chandler, suffering from cataracts, retired immediately after losing his title in a fight where he appeared completely listless and was easily beaten by Richie Sandoval... Pintor gave up his belt to go after Super Bantam king Wilfredo Gomez and lost by 14th round KO in one of the most insane fights of all time... He hung around for a while longer, even pulling off an upset by comprehensively beating Juan Meza for a piece of the Super Bantam belt in 1985 Both men were pretty tall for the division, Pintor at 5'8 and Chandler at 5'7... Chandler was an excellent boxer and technician with a hard punch, particularly a nice straight right hand... He showed a sturdy chin until the very last fight of his career against Sandoval where he was finally dropped... Pintor, while certainly a solid technical fighter, was more of a brawler and threw well with both hands and in the Mexican tradition, was a good bodypuncher... Chandler was more consistent whereas Pintor had a handful of losses here and there in non-title fights, even to some guys he should have beaten soundly... But, both at their bests, who do you think would've won this 15 round contest?
