Will Mayweather / Pacquiao every come to fruition? Who do y'all think will win if it does? As an aside, my top 3 heavyweights of all time (I judge by the "in their prime" test): 1. Pre-ban Ali 2. Jack Johnson 3. Mike Tyson (again, up-to-and-including-Spinks-fight)
Why a new boxing thread? The old one seemed fine enough. To answer the question I think Mayweather's ability to avoid contact will make Manny impatient enough to do something stupid. As to the other question, Ali, Frazier and Louis are the kings of that division for me.
That's a shame. QP was a solid poster and one of the few night owls that could post during my "prime time" posting hours.
Apparently we pissed him off somehow? I don't know. I am hoping to talk to him in the next couple of days.
I agree completely on Mayweather. I wish they would fight because -- public perception being what it is -- Mayweather would only be a slight favorite. But I know enough about boxing to know that public perception as it related to Money and PAC is way off base, and my bank account would benefit accordingly. I didn't think the general public realizes how great Mayweather is. Nobody would ever dare put him in the conversation as one of the greatest pound for pound fighters of all time, but that's a conversation where his name belongs. Imagine if Roy Jones Jr. Were a technically sound fighter...that's Mayweather. He's more physically gifted than everybody else. And he is one of best technical fighters EVER.
I think it's tough to put Smoke up there that high. He was only the third best fighter of his era (behind Ali and Foreman). I don't think Smoke cracks my top ten. Or maybe he does...let's see. I'd put him behind Liston, Tyson, Lewis, Johnson, Ali, Foreman, Louis, Holmes. I might put him ahead of Marciano, Dempsey, Tunney. I'd definitely put him ahead of Holyfield and Patterson and Walcott. And now I'm running out of names. Joe Louis: I think he is wildly overrated . In fact, I may have to change my mind and put Smoke ahead of Louis. Louis never beat a truly great fighter, and he nearly lost several times to decidedly mediocre fighters. What's his best win? Mediocre Schmelling? Dogtrash Braddock? Billy Conn, who wasn't even a heavyweight? Plus, Louis doesn't pass the eyeball test for me. He wasn't that technical. He wasn't a great defensive fighter. He was always getting knocked down, even by mediocre fighters. Louis and Marviano in their prime were pretty evenly matched fighters. I'm not sure who wins that. But no way either guy is beating Ali, Johnson, Foreman, Lewis, Holmes, Tyson, Liston. I might even put Ken Norton ahead of Louis/Marciano. Dempsey and Tunney are hard to rate. Difficult to tell how athletic they were.
Boxing as art. [video=youtube;oJUzl0aFHZw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJUzl0aFHZw[/video] This entire fight is nothing but impressive. But if you don't mind, try to pay special attention to what Ali is doing at the beginning of Round 3. Clay/Ali was known, somewhat infamously, for dodging punches by leaning back. This lean-back maneuver is not something that has ever been taught to a fighter in 200 years. It might be the most fundamentally unsound way of dodging a punch. No other fighter has ever done this before or since. Ali got away with this because he was just a ridiculously gifted athlete in a multitude of different ways: he was fast enough to see a punch coming and pull his head back in time, but more importantly, he had hte flexibility and the balance such that he could lean back and avoid a punch while remaining set on his feet. So, at the start of Round 3, what he is doing is standing his ground in front of Williams -- bouncing a little bit but relatively set in his feet -- and waiting for him to throw a jab. When he sees the jab coming, he leans back to dodge it and then counters with a right hand that he is able to hit Williams with before Williams is even done throwing the jab that Ali just leaned back and dodged. It really isn't even fair. I mean it's one thing to dodge a punch by leaning back, but it's quite another to intend to do this as an offensive tactic for landing a strong counter right hand to the face. Just awesome. You can't draw up a more fundamentally unsound method of landing a right hand. The athleticism required to do that is off the charts, and hasn't been seen in boxing before or since....not even by a smaller man. That Ali was doing this as a 6"-3' 212lb heavyweight is just mindblowing. When he came back from his layoff in the early 1970s he could no longer do stuff like that. He tried..and he could do it a little bit, but he was never the same athlete after the layoff that he was in this fight and his other pre-ban fights. No heavyweight in history could have beaten the pre-ban Ali. Here is a famous shot of his lean-back.
Canelo Alvarez will be fighting Sugar Shane Mosely on the same card as Mayweather-Cotto. He also has a deal struck up to face the winner of the Mayweather-Cotto fight in 2013. Glad to see he is finally taking a step up in competition.
more impressive than Jack Johnson's actual skill in boxing was his lack of fear of the white race. He did whatever the [uck fay] he wanted to do during a time where that could get you lynched and didn't think twice about it
Sugar Shane, in my estimation, has passed the point of no return for future cognitive problems. And still every additional fight is just going to make it worse. He'll be slurring his words in 5 years or less. I respect Sugar Shane as a boxer; he's taken on all comers and fought some battles. But that, unfortunately, when coupled with a career that arguably went several fights too long, is the usual narrative of boxers who are now punch drunk. Shane needs to hang up the gloves. He's had a nice career.
I think pretty much everything about Jack Johnson was impressive. I assume you've seen "Unforgivable Blackness"? If not, buy it, netflix it, whatever...but I highly recommend it. I agree with everything you said, but I do think his boxing skill was quite impressive. He was a great defensive fighter who moved very well and had knockout power. He was actually probably too defensive in his style. He would toy with guys rather than just knock them out. And he wasn't particularly dedicated to fitness, because he never felt he had to be. His is a fascinating story. He was essentially matter-of-fact about boxing and yet for 10 or so years nobody was in his league. This *really* infuriated the white public, who badly wanted to find somebody to beat him, and when that didn't work they tried a different route and got him arrested on the ridiculous Mann Act charge, which you could read about if you wanted more detail. Eventually he just got old and lost, but he was on a different level than everybody else in his prime.
yeah, I might watch it sometime, but i don't really need to. I've read a lot about Jack Johnson and did a research project about him my freshman year. I wasn't trying to take away anything from his boxing skills, but i think he was most well known for his taunting in the ring and his sexual relationships with many, many white women. The first part to really understanding Jack Johnson and what exactly was so special about him is realizing what boxing meant for that time period. It was the ultimate display of masculinity, and a display that had, at least up to that point, been dominated by the white man. It infuriated and emasculated the entire white population that this black man was seemingly unbeatable in this sport, and to top it off, he rubbed it in their faces every chance he got. Johnson was certainly a physical specimen, but his dedication and hard work was mostly found in the bedroom with his white mistresses, rather than i the gym or the ring. It would be interesting to see how good he could have been if he had worked harder to get in good shape, or if he had lived during the time of say, Ali. I don't know that he would have been better than Ali, and i don't really watch enough boxing to know either way, but he certainly would have been more challenged during that era and had many more opportunities to be in amazing fighting shape. His large frame would have certainly been hard to take down.
