Hector camacho - Was He a Great Fighter?

Absolutely crazy.

 

DANG!!! Here i was thinking i'd made a passable post!!!

Back to the drawing board i guess

 

Let that be a lesson to you JT. @Boxed Ears commands nothing less than Yoda level respect in these parts. Crossing him means you’ve clearly gone to the dark side.

 

I thought he was very good but falls short of being great for me.

H2H though at his best he rates very highly for me at Super Featherweight.

 

I normally just bow to his pearls of wisdom but this one time in 100 i just had to contradict him and make a fool of myself. I should have known not to question the great man!!!!

 

Oh, to answer the actual question......no, not quite great. The talent was there but every time he seemed to build a head of steam he derailed himself somehow, leaving the question unanswered.

 

Rosario main problem was he ran into a prime Chavez. His rep leading up to the showdown with Chavez was as high as it had ever been in his career after destroying bramble. There were plenty that thought that he would beat Chavez who was moving up in weight

 

They say he is as forgiving as he is judgmental. We can only hope….

 

My fingers are crossed i tell you.

 

Agree 100% plus....he was fun! Great to see his fights and his post fight comments. He'd be a social media star in today's world.
And he'd kick Ryan Garcia's culo all day.

 

When I first saw Camacho Sr. at Jr.lightweight (Almost all of his early fights were shown live on CBS)
I thought he had potential to be called an ATG. He simply dominated some very good fighters of
the day, fighters like R.Rojas, M.Paul , G.Coverson, all seen as potential championship caliber
boxers and Camacho Sr. made them look average at best.
Then came his absolute destruction of tough as nails Rafeal Limon,(It took the legendary
Alex Arguello 11rds to stop) Camacho blitzkrieged Limon, took him out in 5rds .
I , along with some of the CBS commentators , and the boxing mags of the era thought
maybe just maybe a talent that could rival Ray Robinson.
But the rumours were always their. Late night partying, cocaine and alcohol binges
lackadaisical training in the gym, multiple women and issues with them.
All shadowed his career as early as 1982-83.
Ultimately Camacho's demons won out , and what could've been a career
of legendary status, became a career disrupted by his issues.
Camacho Sr based on his skill level and extreme physicality could easily
have been a top 5-25 boxer in the history of the sport.
As it stands, because of his lack of discipline, and self destructive ways,
he drops out of the top 100.

 

Amazing talent, he seemed to derail a bit after the Rosario fight but as others have said, ended up fighting for year longer than many expected. I honestly thought he was going to beat JC Chavez, and although he didn’t, he showed a lot of guts (and a great chin) in that fight.
I thought he was akin to Naseem Hamed in the first part of his career…similar antics which weren’t exactly appreciated by the media. American boxing magazines seemed to despise him at times.
I’d still put him in the “great” category though, great body of work.

 

For a period of time at 130 and 135, he was

 

No, not in my opinion.

I think his talent was great but he failed to live up to it. Or put another way, there have been plenty of greater fighters than him who weren’t as naturally gifted as he was.

He was going the right way about things for the first 2-3 years of his championship career but he seemed to switch off and take an easier road for a while in the late 80s. His WBO title reign at junior welter was a bit of a waste of time and he had to deal with accusations of being a runner, literally in the case of the Rosario fight and figuratively after that in the way he avoided any real challenges in that period.

The former accusation was probably a little unfair as he showed heart against Rosario but the latter accusation is a fair one, I think. Against decent but not great fighters, he struggled - he barely got by a faded Ray Mancini and he lost to Greg Haugen too. Not sure that is the mark of a great fighter. Although it is worth mentioning that he had to be tough and smart to go his entire 30 year, 88-fight career without a knockout against him, but that alone doesn’t mean he was great.

It took him meeting Chavez in 1992 and taking a pasting for people to give him some credit for toughness. He was thoroughly outfought but hung in there. In fact, when I mentioned Camacho as a greater talent than some great fighters, I could almost have been talking about Chavez, who maximised his own potential and became a huge success despite not being touted as the next great thing. If Camacho had had that kind of focus, who knows what he could have achieved.

 

One of the most talented boxers I have ever seen.

He was a great boxer who could have been even greater.
He outclassed Rameriz very easily even dropping him.
You should have seen him on the way up - he beat prospect after prospect.
He was never the same after the Rosario fight. I think he was so fast that he wasn't used to actually getting hit like Rosario hit him and it shocked him in way.
Kind of like oh wow I can actually get hurt.

All the fights after Rosario were always uneven. One minute he looked good the next minute he was running.
And he could actually get rough when he was first coming up which people forget.