It just struck me that quite a few of the foremost British fighters of the last decades fit this description: Graham, Naz, Froch and Fury, definitely. And Eubank sr. also to a certain degree, I'd say. Conversely, I'm hard pressed coming up with British boxers the were very textbook. Watson, but not many else. Is this just an coincidence?
Yeah you’re just picking out some well known names of British fighters that have a different style to what we are used to but vast majority of them don’t or can’t fight like them. Quite a lot probably still fight in the old European stand up straight style with straight jab followed by right hand like Frank Bruno did or maybe that just a out dated stereotype?
I think you`re right just looking at Eubank Jr! Watson made a lot of mistakes, watch the film study of how McCallum dismantled him, I think there`s a strong belief in Britain that fundamentals aren`t important.
Yeah, Watson overreached a lot against McCallum. Mike was an old fox and trapped him, though. Watson started from a fundamental base, but couldn't always keep it together, obviously. His fight against Benn was a great advertisement for sound fundamentals, but keeping it together against a technical master like McCallum was another thing.
Don’t want to speak ill of Watson but really he became very overrated after the Benn fight.Not saying that he wasn’t a good fighter but that win was mainly down to Benn fighting one of his dumbest fights ever rather than any genius moves on Watson’s part. Benn just came out throwing furious non stop left and wide hooks and Watson just laid on the ropes mainly,both hands held high protecting the chin and the side of the body like Marlon Starling used to do and just just hit Benn when he took a breather. Benn just carried on swinging even though he wasn’t getting through and unwilling to do anything different and just exhausted himself. Give credit to Watson for sticking to his game plan but it didn’t suddenly make him a master boxer or showed that he was a versatile fighter like many seem to think. If anything, the most notable thing to come out of that fight was that it made Benn totally change his thinking and that he had to learn how to box properly and adapt his tactics to his opponents rather than trying to mindlessly try to hook them to death all the time.
I think that the scoring in Europe has traditionally penalized fighters who rely too heavily on the jab, and that this has impacted the type of fighters that Europe has produced. Everything evened out over time of course, but by then the seed was sewn in the ground.
I heard it was Herol Graham, the man that Hagler ducked,that was the guy that inspired generations of British fighters that wanted to fight in the unique totally unorthodox style that he fought in?
Your forgetting Henry cooper with his unique shovel hook, though he was for the most part a good technical fighter
you got it the wrong way round here, for Britain anyway... British fighters fought in the 'Upright' British style/stance followed by basic and straight boxing, because they HAD Too... British fighters until the 60s were 'instantly' disqualified for low blows, and the Board (BBBofC) wouldn't change it to the better way, the American way, for many years. this made for some fantastic lovely Boxers over the years, but it denied them the opportunity to get rugged and fighting ready for the most part, it denied them the 'mix' of box/fighter in 'most' of them... there were exceptions of course, but most were Boxers, some excellent, and fighters second. thankfully the Board eventually admitted the American way was better and STOPPED DQing fighters, which they should have done years & years prior. God knows it would have helped their Big men, their Heavyweights!
Alot of British fighters I had always felt were sort of stiff but we have a culture of fighters replicating pros not sure about Britain