There is no such thing really as an "European" style. There was the Soviet era school of boxing, that is widespread in Europe. You could go to any boxing gym in Europe and see that they do very similar things to what the Soviets did. There is a reason so many "European" amateur talents turn out to be fantastic pros. They have great fundamentals. I mean, you can disagree with me, but you better give some sort of a technical breakdown as to why you think "European boxing styles are **** poor compared to American styles"
I said European boxing styleS, not style. And most if not all Europeans flop against Americans, because most of the top Americans learn at least one of the following skills: parrying, catching, rolling (with the head or with the shoulder), and infighting, while not a single European boxing school teaches ANY of these skills. They have "great fundamentals" my ass. Boxing is not Taekwondo with hands; if you don't know how to do at least one of the aforementioned skills then you will always be limited unless you're a heavyweight and can get away with that due to power and strength. You see all of these weaknesses in Lomachenko, Usyk, Gvozdyk, and Golovkin, and they all lost clearly or will lose clearly because of this.
Aight. Fair. Um, not that true at all. Unless you have a different definition of flop, than what the dictionary states. What. The. Actual. ****? My man, you care completely out of loop here. Hell, I am in Europe, and you just described the average technical training day for me. And you listed guys who have perfected do exactly what you claimed that they don´t do.
Which ones? Of those guys, I only saw Lomachenko use any defensive technique other than the high guard or upper body movement or foot movement, and it was a weird impression of a cross guard. Why don't you teach these guys, then?
Do you understand why so many Europeans hire American trainers once they reach the States while no American fighter has ever hired or will ever hire a European trainer?
Because America has a long and rich history of boxing.Pretty ****ing easy to understand that. And Europeans rarely hire American trainers, unless they move to the states/fight there. We have a big difference of opinion here. You seem to think that all a European does is just stand tall and throw straight punches or something. If the so called American style was so much superior, then how come they barely do anything in the amateurs? "Amateurs is not the same as pros". OK, but Ring Magazine only has 3 Americans in their P4P. And you would think that they would be dominating the divisional rankings as well, but they are not.
Mexicans have been learning those slick old-school skills for about 20-30 years now, so it's understandable that so many top fighters right now are Mexicans. Of the fighters on the Ring P4P list, 3 of them (Taylor, Golovkin, and Usyk) are Euro or EE. I'm actually a big fan of Taylor and his head movement and infighting skills. Usyk struggled defensively numerous times against journeyman Chisora when he shouldn't have (I wrote about this in my thread "Usyk needs Floyd") and will be dominated by HWs better than Chisora unless he learns more slick skills. Holyfield did better against Bowe and other similar HWs, who were far, far, far better than Chisora and around the same size as Chisora. Golovkin had clear defensive liabilities exposed in his fights against Jacobs and Canelo and would have gotten his sh*t kicked in by Ward at 168. I am not knocking Euro/EE fighters, I'm just observing them. My two favorite fighters right now are Fury and Taylor. I think Warrington's cool too. But also, I'm tired asf of the Euro/EE Redtube simulation this forum has become.
Oh, please. This forum ****ing despises the likes of Usyk and Loma. They had great amateur runs and have done well in the pros, and people hate the attention they get for it. They deserve all the praise. I agree with your remarks on Golovkin and his defense. It´s rather one dimensional. But here is a nice twist, he is trained by an American And he has been trained by an American for a long, long time now. How do you explain away that. Gvozdyk was also trained by an American.
Reading through the comments. Just want to say that yes, we can pretty clearly say: Calzaghe > Golovkin
People see what they want to see. Badbot clearly views the minority as the majority, for example... Lomachenko is the biggest darling this forum has ever seen in my 10 years here. And Golovkin is the only close second. Usyk deserves more of the extreme praise than the other two I just named but he also gets it at 1/10th of the rate for 1/3rd of the time. I don't think anybody worth taking serious hates on Usyk except when people pretend Briedis and Gassiev are really great and/or historically notable.
Hard to see anything distinctly European in boxing today. Yes, there are similarities between Usyk and Loma and between GGG and Beterbiev and between Fury and Saunders for example, but that's more down to a national level than a European one.
Ward was on another level of self-righteousness, that's for certain. Must come from his white liberal father. But don't rewrite history, most thought Kovalev won the first fight and even those that didn't thought it was a close win for Ward, in other words, not much separated them. It's also clear that Kov was already on the slide around then, he was approaching mid 30s. The Kov that beat Cleverly probably would have iced Ward. When you think about it, there were a lot of guys Ward didn't fight at SMW that would have given him a lot of trouble. He fought Froch and Kessler, fair enough, but look at his record and you see these ex MW's and drained Dawson before he goes to LHW. There were some serious fighters at SMW he never faced. Groves and Jack were both skilled, strong and with more power. Groves was very fast too. Degale may have been a real problem also. I don't think Ward's record will age too well. He retired too early and his rep is based on the Super Six and then two tainted fights with Kovalev.
Ward would own 168 easily today. None of these guys are close to as good as a prime Kovalev who got his soul extracted by SOG.
