I have never seen this match-up asked. Wills of the twenties versus the Moore of the early fifties. Any opinions?
gotta go with a Wills Ko..To big to strong with good boxing skills..both faught amazing competition but wills edges it in a HW sense..would be a great fight Wills ko 9/10
Difficult to know without footage of Wills......But Archie struggle to beat Valdes, who had a similar style.....
Struggle? In the first fight, he knocked Valdes down and won nearly every round. In the rematch, Moore fought a peaking Valdes and outworked Nino late by sweeping the last 3 rounds to win a close but clear unanimous decision. Valdes was on an 11-0 run including a win over # 1 rated Ezzard Charles, and some claim Marciano's management was avoiding him. I favor Wills in this matchup, but to say Moore struggled with Valdes while going 2-0 against him, is a stretch.
I'm not convinced that Wills was appreciably better than Moore his wins over Langford tend to be when he was in his ascendancy and, Sam was in his decline.Plus Harry had considerable physical advantages over little Sam. I will give Wills the nod, but would not be surprised if he lost this one. Wills has reaped the benefit of revisionist history to some extent ,imo.
Yeah, the scorecard of the second fight is close....8-5-2....and the point is : Wills was much better than Valdes.....that what I was saying......
Moore doesn't have the experience advantage against Wills that he could exploit against the heavyweights of his day. It would be ugly but Wills would probably get the better of the action in the end. He had the advantages in size and it would be a mauling type of fight for the most part.
Moore wasn't in the best shape for the second Valdez fight. He was coming off a long lay off by his standards, and was said to be unusually flabby and bloated.
Despite this he came on strong at the end. Like James Toney in recent times, Moore was so good at conserving his stamina and fighting relaxed that it did not matter if he wasn't in the best of shapes. Later on he would weigh even 10 pounds heavier than against Nino and still win.
-I read it was evenly fought until Moore turned it up at the end. I have little doubt that wasn't part of his strategy. Charles was said to have lost the Valdez fight by punching himself out early and getting smothered after the fact. -Moore got heavier but the Valdez fight is one of the few times I've seen him described as being flabby.
There had to be something to him as Kearns and Rickard didn't want their tiger anywhere near the ring with this guy.
