the what fights did you watch today\scorecard thread.

Jose Torres W15 Eddie Cotton

Glad I saw this from at least a historical perspective. Must've been a slow year if this won "Fight of The Year" honors, but it was compelling in spots.

Frustrating. That's the one word I would use to describe this as a fan. Neither man seemed willing to commit his resources to a point of truly claiming victory. Torres showed a bit of a spark in the last two rounds, but there was no excuse for leaving it to the end that way. The guy in front of you is 40 for God's sake. Tax him, take his legs away, work! Do SOMEthing besides hide placidly behind your peekaboo defense. There's so little fire in Torres, he's hard for me to watch. Too content to be a fighter.

Cotton fights well, but his style is more naturally defensive. He too should have worked more, but he can at least fall back on his age and natural style as excuses. I guess.

Whichever way you cut it, opportunities abounded for both men to make a statement with their efforts, and the fight was winnable for both. In the end, they were apparently content to let the sentence end with a period instead of an exclamation mark, and let the judges do their math and decide who was incrementally more effective, if not ambitious.

1-Torres
2- Even
3-Torres
4-Torres
5-Cotton
6-Cotton
7-Cotton
8-Torres
9-Torres
10-Cotton
11-Cotton
12-Torres
13-Cotton
14-Torres
15-Torres

144-142 Torres.

 

There you go again @salsanchezfan, picking on the classics.

 

At least it wasn't a Vinny Pazienza fight.

Then again, at least he tried.

 

Shame on you.

 

Winky Wright vs Fernando Vargas

1 Vargas
2 Wright
3 Even
4 Vargas
5 Wright
6 Wright
7 Vargas
8 Wright
9 Wright
10 Vargas
11 Wright
12 Vargas

115-114 Wright

I decided to rewatch this fight again because of the recent thread made here about Wright, overall i felt like Wright was unlucky to lose the decision. I'm not saying it was a robbery but i would find it hard to have Vargas winning the fight, for me at best Vargas deserved a draw.

Wright for me was the aggressor for most of the fight and definitely had the better of it after 9 rounds. Vargas would have his moments counter punching and landing the harder punches when he decided to slug with Wright. But for me Wright's effective aggression coming forward clearly had the edge after 9 rounds. To Vargas's credit he did rally in the last few rounds, but Vargas clearly lost the 11th round. And i don't think Vargas's rally in rounds 10 and 12 were enough to overcome Wright's work in the first 9 rounds.

Overall a very good fight though but for me Wright was unlucky to lose here, i think at worst Wright should've got a draw.

 

D, scored this about 2 years ago. Although off in a round or two, we're very close in our assessments. This is what I wrote:

Fernando Vargas v Winky Wright

Round 1: 10-9 Vargas
Round 2: 10-9 Vargas
Round 3: 10-10 Even
Round 4: 10-9 Vargas
Round 5: 10-9 Wright
Round 6: 10-9 Wright
Round 7: 10-9 Vargas
Round 8: 10-10 Even
Round 9: 10-9 Wright
Round 10: 10-9 Vargas
Round 11: 10-9 Wright
Round 12: 10-9 Vargas

Total: 116-114 Vargas (actual scores: 115-113, 116-112 both for Vargas and a 114-114 Even, for a majority win for Vargas)

Wow, so close. If I scored this again, I know my score would be different. I think a draw would have been the correct score here. One has to stay super-focused on this fight when scoring. I wanted to just sit back and enjoy it after a couple of rounds of scrutinizing, but then just kept to the task. There's no bad score here as long as its close.

 

Francisco 'Panchito' Bojado v Frankie Santos

Round 1: 10-9 Bojado
Round 2: 10-9 Bojado
Round 3: 10-9 Bojado
Round 4: 10-10 Even
Round 5: 10-10 Even
Round 6: 10-9 Santos
Round 7: 10-9 Bojado
Round 8: 10-9 Bojado
Round 9: 10-9 Bojado
Round 10: Bojado drops and stops Santos

Total through 9 completed rounds: 89-84 Bojado (actual scores: 88-83, 87-84 and another 87-84 all for Bojado)

This was a decent fight and in the middle rounds it really looked like Santos was taking the play away from Bojado before Panchito ramped up his output. Santos wasn't a bad fighter at all. What he had that Bojado did not was good fundamentals. He had a tight guard, a sharp jab, worked the body nicely and threw some sharp combos. Bojado on the other hand threw flashy punches with his guard down and many times would land while on the move. Again, flashy, but they weren't taking root. On the telecast they made a point of saying that Bojado has already changed trainers 3 times before the age of 20. I think he needed some continuity in his boxing life as he never got to that next step. Still, he finally did enough here to take out the stubborn Santos.

 

It was a very close fight but I can't help feel that Wright was a bit unlucky. Considering he fought out of his normal comfort zone taking it too Vargas.

I don't feel like Wright ever got the benefit of the doubt in any of his close fights vs Vargas, Simon, Taylor. I might actually watch the Taylor and Simon fights again this week.

 

Julio Cesar Chavez vs Rocky Lockridge:

Round 1: Lockridge
Round 2: Chavez
Round 3: Chavez
Round 4: Chavez
Round 5: Lockridge
Round 6: Chavez
Round 7: Chavez
Round 8: Lockridge
Round 9: Chavez
Round 10: Chavez
Round 11: Chavez
Round 12: Chavez

117-111 Chavez, why people say this was a close fight i do not know.

 

@salsanchezfan what would be your pick for 1966 FOTY?

 

Fidel Bassa W15 Hilario Zapata (1)

This was a really intriguing fight. I'd seen one of the McAuley fights (Bassa) and one Zapata fight that hardly counts, his one round demolition at the hands of Sung Kil Moon. I needed some more info on both.

I like Bassa; he comes at the slick Zapata like a house on fire. I was going to wax poetic here if I could, something about substance over form and how Bassa won this through sheer aggression, effective or otherwise in the face of more stylish skills. Midway through the fight, that storyline made sense.

It's not that Zapata was fighting badly or making mistakes. He tried to maintain distance, he tried snapping the jab, he tried doing whatever it was he was accustomed to doing. Little of that has meaning though, when you have a whirling dervish in front of you. Bassa was all over him, nullifying any pretense Zapata might have had about keeping distance or countering smartly. He was just trying to survive.

Zapata though, is a marvel of conditioning and coordination. somehow he not only withstands the windmill attack of Bassa going into the mid-rounds, he rallies, still slick as ever, still composed, still boxing crisply and maintaining focus and sharpness. Perhaps form over substance really is the way to go. Or maybe Zapata just had both.

Zapata never hurts Bassa, but the Columbian shows himself to be human after all and decelerates sharply in the second half of the fight. How could he not? Suddenly, Zapata is maintaining comfortable distance with his increasingly frequent jab, always bending this way and that to avoid whatever may be coming back, real or imagined. Bassa never stops chasing but throws far less and now it's Zapata putting rounds in the bank, closing the deficit in a big hurry.

The 15th round is a study in contrast. Zapata opens sharply with more movement and jabs, but Bassa decides to try to offset what he can even if he can't throw many punches anymore. He mauls Zapata and wrestles him to the ropes to try to negate the nonstop movement. I scored that one even, which was important. If Bassa won the round outright I'd have had it a draw instead of a close points win for Zapata. Really though, this fight is as close as can be, and any score for either man by as much as a couple points is totally fine as far as I'm conerned. It's that kind of fight. I have no problem with the decision going to Bassa even though I had Zapata by the very slimmest of margins.

1. Bassa
2. Bassa
3. Bassa
4. Even
5. Bassa
6. Bassa (seems like he's running away with this thing)
7. Zapata
8. Bassa
9. Zapata
10. Zapata (hmmmm......getting interesting now)
11. Zapata
12. Zapata
13. Zapata
14. Zapata
15. Even

This is Dewey-Truman and Dave Wottle at Munich in 1972 all over again.

144-143 Zapata.

I'd be keenly interested to see other cards. This one was hard.

 

Carlos Ortiz vs. Sugar Ramos is a contender. It’s certainly the most eventful fight of the year.

 

Oh I don't know. I thought Harada-Jofre 2 was better than this. LIke I said, it was probably a down year for great fights. Tiger's fights with Griffith and Torres himself were probably as good too I'd say.