Fighters with Late Primes

somesaytinmanwaldowasgreenat42-2andage28lolklittards

This content is protected

 

Its not so much that they got better it is more that they start getting the credit or are alowed to showcase the talent they always had at the right platform. Hopkins never stood out as a P4P champ when he was younger but by hanging around slowly he got the credit and landed the superfights. Any fighter looks great at any age winning against somebody who is overmatched. call it mindgames, call it using experience, call it what you want but often a confident veteran gets the edge just because he has seen it all before.. If you have a significant edge the loser becomes overmatched. often a prime fighter is just brining one thing to the table and the vetran sees past that. because an old fighter beats a younger guy who is given too much credit dosnt make the older guy better than he was as a young man. Hes just wiser and now he is landing bigger fights. joe calzaghe and lennox lewis did not get better. They got wiser.

 

No mention for Sergio Martinez yet?

 

Sergio is a good call, because he started boxing so lately. I don't know if many will agree with Mike McCallum. Great fighter in the 80's who was probably at his physical prime at that time, but look at his performances against Toney in the 90's ! Toney vs McCallum 1 is one of my favorite fight of all time. Two boxers fighting at a level so high is quite rare to see.

 

Joe Walcott is the one that comes to mind first

 

Throw in Charles and Louis and you get a free I Love Brockton T-Shirt ..

 

Your grammar is ****ed m8. :smooch

 

I think these guys primes came and left before they became big name fighters. Esp Moore. He was that good.

 

Tony Thompson

 

Gene Tunney's best career performance came in his swan song, against his heaviest opponent, Tom Heeney.

We just don't know how much better Gene would have gotten, but my very first posts on ESB in April 2007 posited that he could have retained the title until Louis was ready to take it, if Tunney had gone on as long as he could.

I believe the Dempsey of Toledo could have taken the Tunney of the Heeney bout, but Gene really never displayed himself to better effect than in 1928, and even Loughran did not attempt to move up until he was safely gone. As far as I'm concerned, there's no way Sharkey and Schmeling attain the title with Tunney defending it. Gene's hand problems were now behind him, and he was getting heavier and stronger. When he closed in on the kill for Heeney, his hands were moving too fast for NBC's ringside announcer Graham McNamee to keep up.

Does the Dempsey of 1919 defeat whatever Tunney would have been bringing to the table from 1929 to 1932? Gene's intelligence, ridiculous discipline and continued physical development make that into serious speculation. Like Ali, we never saw his potential fulfilled.

 

Frankie Randall and Harold Brazier are two names that instantly popped into my head.

Randall you might say showed good potential early on, but he was rather hot and cold pre Chavez.... Drugs obviously had somehting to do with it...

 

People say Jersey Joe Walcott but I am sure they have never seen a younger version of Walcott in action.
Maybe he was just as good or better at 24 or 25 as he was at 35 or 36. But just unlucky.

I think that's pretty much true for Archie Moore too, anyway.


Lennox Lewis is probably a good call. He was in his prime at 30 or later.
Bernard Hopkins too. He was about 36 when he fought Trinidad, and was still around his prime, and better than he'd been at 27 or 28.


Men who started boxing late are usually going to have a relatively "late prime" too.

 

I agree with this none of the guys between Tunney's reign and Louis would have been champions with Gene Tunney wearing the crown.

 

Tunney was great but I have a problem with these "could have done" scenarios.
Especially about a guy who voluntarily retired and relinquished his title.
If he wasn't finished physically in 1929, he was finished mentally. By definition he just wasn't up for fighting any more. And he never came back.

We can't really talk about his "intelligence, ridiculous discipline and continued physical development" without acknowledging that the same goal-oriented mindset and single-mindedness was part and parcel of his decision to retire.
He achieved what he set out to do, and then moved on to other things.
I find it hard to imagine it any other way.

 

He was past prime when he fought Trinidad.