Little Overblown Narratives?

One that was overblown well into his career was that Lennox Lewis had a stamina problem and was vulnerable in the later rounds. I think this was based on him dropping his hands, switching off in fights, and sometimes fighting with his mouth open.

Looking at his career objectively, he never lost a fight due to stamina issues; you could argue I guess that the Rahman loss was set up by not being in shape, but it was still a bolt from the blue one-punch KO. He also rallied late on in several fights, stopping Bruno when behind on the cards, sweeping the last few rounds against Holyfield II and Mercer, and dropping Tucker late on when the fight seemed to be turning against him. However, you still get people saying that his stamina wasn't great, and that he would have fallen over if the fight with Vitali had continued.

 

That Carmen Basilio was rough, tough, pure brawling man.

I mean, he was rough, tough and could brawl, but he had an absolutely excellent skill set and a very good defensive radar. He gave both Gavilan and Robinson, amongst others, fits boxing and style wise.

 

Ricky Hatton's overall skill and style is also vastly underrated on these forums, compared to a Miguel Cotto type who I find quite overrated.

Ricky was an excellent body puncher and mauler, who was adept at getting good angles inside and imposing his strength in a calculating way. I also thought he had good punch selection too.

I swear, Ricky Hatton never gets picked to win fantasy H2H, even ones where I think he would win quite clearly.

 

1 punch by the great Manny turned Ricky forever more into a glass man.

 

Not that much of a knock against him when that punch was being delivered by an ATG top 40 ALL TIME fighter at the peak of his powers.

What other fighter at 140 wouldn't be KOd? Very, very few.

 

Ah, I got it now haha.

 

Pernell Whitaker is usually viewed as a pure defensive fighter who hits and moves a lot when he was really a great all-round fighter. Somehow his offensive skills always get overshadowed by his fancy looking defense. In reality he threw a lot of punches, could punch from all angles, combinations, threw great body punches, excellent jab and counter puncher, and was a great inside fighter (and even outfought Chavez on the inside as well).

I think most people just watch highlight videos of Whitaker's defense and immediately think that's what he is. There's been many fights where Whitaker stood his ground up close without moving a lot and displayed excellent offense.

 

Wholeheartedly agree. Hatton gets severely underrated on here because of the misconception of him being just a one dimensional brawler when he was more than that. He's only lost to 2 of the very best fighters at the time, and lost again immediately after when where he was clearly not fit to fight again.

 

The Norton one is good. People always parrot that bull&%$*.

Mancini's middle name must actually be "Glorified Clubfighter." So many armchair warriors here who read a boxing magazine once in the 80's read that and have a simple answer to something that they think makes them sound authoritative. What it makes them sound is simplistic and unimaginative. Ray might not have been the greatest lightweight in history but he was a hell of a sight better than some are willing to give him credit for.

 

Marciano was cut against Charles in the first fight
Against Walcott first fight
Moore
And badly cut against Schkor, Simmons, and Charles.

 

Naseem Hamed's career regression gets overblown. While he was clearly a better fighter at (eg) the Johnson fight than he was for Barrera, some people talk as if he was untouchable in his prime and deteriorated rapidly once he split with Ingle.

In reality, his training habits were lax even early on in his career, and he struggled in a few fights even when at his best. One of his standout wins (Bungu) came only a year before the Barrera fight.

Barrera is another example. It gets overblown how much he changed his style after the losses to Jones, mainly based on the Hamed fight. He boxed more than brawled in many of his earlier fights, including the second fight with Jones. He picked a strategy that worked with Hamed, based on studying his fights and his obvious weaknesses when he lunged in. He was probably capable of doing so earlier in his career as well. Jones (similar to McKinney) presented some technical and stylistic issues for Barrera, which he wasn't able to resolve fully even by changing things up in the rematch.

 

I'm surprised Hatton doesn't get more love from classicists.

 

All action value for money fighter.