James Slater - Pacquiao better than Armstrong?

Henry Armstrong rates waaaay above Pacquiao, if you don't think so watch some more of his fights and maybe when he won 3 titles in a short period of time when there was only 8 divisions and he really did win the 4th title but got robbed with the draw

 

I'm with Unforgiven, Hank even in hypotheticals wins this, too strong imo.

 

I've been thinking over Pacquiao's career lately, and I've noticed a number of parallels between his career and Armstrong's.

-Both had very impressive runs across multiple weight classes in the span of a few years.
-Both jumped straight up several weight classes and instantly broke into a higher weight by surprisingly dominating an aging HOFer (Armstrong vs. Ross, Pacquiao vs. DeLaHoya).
-Both then dropped back down in weight to win a title from the top man below that weight (Armstrong vs. Ambers, Pacquiao vs. Hatton).
-Both later moved up to MW (or jr. MW in Pacquiao's case) and tried to take a title from a WW-turned-jr. MW, who was much naturally bigger than them.
-Both men appeared to burn out soon after their fight against the MW/jr. MW, perhaps suggesting that taking the bigger man's punches took something out of them.
-Both lost titles on highly controversial decisions in fights where many people felt they dominated their opponent (Armstrong vs. Ambers, Pacquiao vs. Bradley).
-Both saw their runs at the top come to surprising ends against old veterans. Both were also stopped by the old veteran, which was the first time either had been stopped since they were much younger and at much lower weights.

 

All accurate observations. Although I'd bet Pacquiao doesn't carry on whacking contenders for as long.

 

Who was the old veteran which knocked out Armstrong?

Did they rematch?

 

Fritzie Zivic. Beat Armstrong narrowly to take his title, then stopped him in the rematch. Zivic was never a real talent, but a crafty, dirty, almost journeyman-like fighter who cut people up and took a chunk out of them even if he lost. He obviously knew exactly how Armstrong worked and he cut him up, legally or illegally. In retrospect, probably one of the worst fighters to face if you'd been running a hectic schedule and worn yourself out, like turning a corner and falling into a snake pit.

Armstrong won a third encounter though.

 

As crazy as this sounds considering Pac went from fly to welter, he doesn't hold a candle to armstsrong in terms of cross weight achievements. To be fair it is very difficult now for someone to be an undisputed champion, let alone from fw to ww but it's not like it was easy in armstrongs day when the other two champs where Ross and ambers.

h2h we now know pacs weakness to timing and combinations so I don't think it can reasonably argued on any level that Pac is above Armstrong.

Still its good to get a glimpse of the past coz when he stopped cotto he really was on fire.

Genuine shame his run has come to an end.

 

Makes for a great discussion topic :good

But we are comparing a guy with 1156 ring rounds to a guy with 371. A guy with 150 wins to a guy with 54 wins.

 

On a side note, it's just struck me that Pacquiao's first loss (to Rustico Torrecampo down at flyweight) ended on almost the exact same punch as the one Marquez took him out with, except thrown from a southpaw stance.

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See the slow motion replay at the end.

 

I still have Pac ahead of Mayweather currently. But yeah, never did he come close to touching Armstrong. I think Pac can conceivably be ranked anywhere from the 20-50 range. The Marquez loss certainly hurts a lot, though. Some may now argue he's should be ranked even lower than that bracket. Most did not argue that before the Marquez fight.