Fight of the Week #9: Chavez v. Taylor & Whitaker

Joe Cortez is my least favorite ref. He interjects himself all to often, andceven crowds the fighters when deciding if he should break them. He did a horrible job with the fouling...and breaking.

 

More revisionism going on here I see. People are LOOKING to see all these damaging punches to Taylor, again to justify that Chavez was putting a brutal beating on Taylor and it was a closer fight than the cards reflected. It absolutely was not a closer fight than the cards SHOULD'VE reflected. First, I didn't see Taylor hurt by all these punches people are claiming he's hurt by. It's plain silly. He's engaging Chavez DIRECTLY after these supposed deadly brutal punches that hurt Taylor... and he's right in the line of fire exchanging right back. You don't generally see that when a fighters hurt... and you don't see him walk right back out there right in the line of fire over and over if you keep getting hurt over and over. That doesn't happen. You natural survival instincts take over, and that wouldn't be to keep walking right into the fire and getting badly hurt. Taylor acted the COMPLETE opposite of someone taking these supposed career ending punches. It's ludicrous already.

Second, common sense tells us all these HURFUL punches Taylor took where you can see him hurt... why didn't the follow up punches with all this great power behind them all well fell him right then and there? Generally when a fighter is stunned and hurt... and you keep hitting him.... he goes down. Yet here, and these brutal punches that people can see Taylor being hurt by.. somehow when he's hit with more of them... it doesn't finish the job? Odd, that defies logic and reason. Or could it be that he wasn't as badly hurt as people are making out?

Lastly, again, punches landed MATTER... this whole subjective nonsense about Chavez punches being more telling and therefore that is how some get to a closer card is hilarious. Taylor was landing VASTLY more punches than Chavez, and it wasn't close. They weren't just little flicks he was landed good clean hard blows all throughout the fight. To even imply this fight was close is being blatantly disingenuous imo

 

??? I get your stance, just not sure who you are talking too??? Much revisionism???

Only 3 people have given a card and 2 of us had it wide. I gave 10 of 11 to Meldrick with another card having him up 5.

I agree it should be difficult to score towards JCC, but I don’t know why you say there is much revisionism (at least in how it pertains to this particular thread) when there is only one card that said it was close?

 

At the time it was considered a very close fight: the magazines thought that the card with Taylor up by 8 was ridiculous. As the years pass, the fight has become more one sided. For a fight he was so clearly dominating, somebody certainly kicked Meldrick's ass.
The night of the fight I figured the knockdown sealed a victory for Chavez by one to three points. It was a close fight because Taylor had a huge amount of courage and fought his heart out. But he got beat up.

 

Well, for starters, Pat M only had Taylor up by 2 points heading into the 12th. That is the revisionism I'm talking about. Trying to look for these harder punches and then subjectively say... Well those looked harder, must've hurt Taylor more, and therefore I'll count 1 of those for every 2/3 of Taylor's cause they MUST BE that hard.... I mean, Taylor was never the same again.... oh wait. That is the revisionism going on here. We count punches landed in boxing, and that is the most important criteria for scoring a boxing match. Yet here, it's crystal clear that Taylor decisively outlanded Chavez and not with just pitty patty punches... he was landing hard blows as well. Yet somehow, people are seeing a 2 point difference or a "closer fight" than the scorecards because Chavez landed all these punches that hurt Taylor, and want to forget Taylor outlanded him by a SIGNIFICANT margin.

 

It’s still just 1 person not much revisionism. And while I disagree with Pats card I respect him as a poster and have scored most fights similar to him over the past few months. And while I had Taylor winning 10-1 I thought 2-5-11 were very close rounds, so to score them for Chavez it is not unreasonable to score 5 rounds for him.

 

True, one person in this thread, but there is another thread on page 2 now, that also talks about this fight where people are talking about how they had it a close fight going into the 12th ... even fight etc etc. So when you couple this thread, with more comments about a close fight here... that is where I see the revisionism going on.

I totally agree with respecting Pat M's opinion and he is entitled to a view of a fight using his how eyes and criteria. No issue there, and I like reading his posts. I'm just simply saying and this statement will reflect my view on this.... If you come to a close fight or an even fight going into the 12th round of Taylor - Chavez... You could only do so by trying to look for reasons in favor in Chavez... I can see no other way to score that fight close.

 

Interesting tidbit, I just came across that tilts things towards Whitaker. It appears 1 judge deducted a point from Whitaker (that he is not allowed to do) for a low blow in rd 6. Without this Whitaker would have won a split decision. This reminds me of Whitaker vs DLH where some posters arbitrarily felt they did not need to subtract a point in rd 3 for a ref imposed deduction. The judges had to abide by that and we are not allowed to simply decide on our own to score for or against the refs decision. Anyway here is the comment and link:

Even worse, this verdict could have been avoided. Vann revealed during an interview with the Star of London newspaper that, “I deducted a point from Whitaker for an appallingly low blow in the sixth round.” A judge doesn’t have the power to unilaterally subtract points and his action had a direct bearing on the final result, for Whitaker would have walked out of the ring with a majority decision victory.

https://www.ringtv.com/387791-head-to-head-for-pound-for-pound-whitaker-chavez-remembered/

 

I can assure you that it's not revisionism or favoritism, if I'm wrong it's just because I'm wrong. Often I turn in the first scorecard for the Fight of the Week, but usually I admit that I could be completely wrong. I think I did on this one too. I like these Fight of the Week threads because they don't become heated and the ones who score usually find that there are a lot of close rounds that could go either way.

I don't consider myself to be a fight judge so any criticism of my scoring won't upset me. I enjoy scoring these fights of the week because it gives me a reason to look at old fights and fighters that I haven't seen for awhile. I don't have any favorite fighters so my scores are what I see at the time, the next day I might score the same fight completely different. Don't take my scoring too seriously, I'm not trying to sway anybody else and I have no agenda.

 

Fair enough, at the time I watched these fights I had Meldrick clearly ahead though wilting badly near the knockdown and I was 14 years old so didn`t keep a scorecard, seen bits and bobs here and there since, but I have watched tesecond round of both these fights right through recently and felt Chavez won the second round in both fights, which is significant because, people are harsh on Chavez in the opening rounds of both of these bouts.

 

Cool deal. Most of us have scored it years ago. Go ahead and take an hour and rescore it. The mire cards we get the better

 

I would have to watch it again... which I really don't feel like doing... especially as it is my "make money" season and I don't have a lot of free time. Maybe in spring.