Greater/Better: Tszyu or Hamed

I loved Tszyu as an amatuer, but his style as a pro disappointed me, relatively speaking. He roboticised quickly and became more of a plodding, stalking, straight up and down, methodical fighter that was over-reliant on sharpshooting the right-hand, and showed issues with versatility, defence, physicality and durability. Not big ones for the latter two, but enough that I'd agree he wouldn't beat Mosley or ODLH.

Hamed had more natural athletic and punching talent than Tszyu, but he was such a flawed fighter technically, and became increasingly one-dimensional, lazy, and mentally suspect. I always thought it was odd that Ingle/Hamed used to make a point of how they had based his style on Herol Graham's unorthodox, reflex heavy approach, yet he didn't have anywhere the secondary textbook elements in his style that Graham had to fall back on...namely properly schooled, genuinely elite footwork and a solid understanding of how to get more textbook with single shots and combinations (and some infighting), if need be. Makes me wonder if Ingle was actually responsible for those parts.

Not like with his unorthodox KO power he needed to be correct in every way in there, that sort of thing gives you some leeway for risktaking and odd approaches...but just having that schooled footwork and some tidier offensive variety would have meant he wouldn't be able to be exposed and entirely shut down by basic, patient, tidy textbook boxing in the way he ultimately was. It's not like Barrera was McCallum or Kalambay in there with his boxing chops. Add those extra elements on top of his power and he would have been a very scary featherweight to fight.

Kostya was the better overall fighter, though saying Hamed was not a real boxer is dumb, and an insult to all of the well-schooled professionals he did beat. The guy was a distinctly flawed waste of a talent, but not a fraud.

 

Kostya was on a typical modern world champion fight schedule when he lost that fight.

Two defences in '95...three in '96....Phillips was the second for '97, four months after the first in january, with about the same amount of time between that and from the last in '96.

He was far from being on some grindingly intense old-school schedule that would be unusual for a 1990s fighter and the level of his challengers was average for a splinter-champ of the era.

No, that bout was taken in ideal conditions as long as he himself wasn't sabotaging it with poor dedication in training, something that he was never accused of; it simply showed up some flaws in him against a capable challenger.

 

Yeah, it was quite obvious at the time for at least a few years by then that he was losing focus and dedication to the sport in general, it was getting to the point that even a fair few of the more casual fans I knew were noticing it...which is not to say they thought he was going to lose, but still. he was getting ever more one-dimensional and disinterested in setting up his bombs, which was hardly ever a sophisticated strong point of his in the first place. You could also see a difference in his physique and reflexes by then, he was slower and softer looking. I wouldn't be surprised if that fight had not taken place, that he would have been forced up in weight soon because of his lifestyle, despite not being a big featherweight.

A fight circa 96-98 with Barrera or Morales would have been interesting because of the tendency to fight more aggressively they had, and Hamed's reputation as a puncher not being as widely respected. A loss then might have actually forced some attempts at stylistic and technical refinement, but it could well have been too late to change much even then.

 

Show me someone fighting guys like ex champ LaPorte, future champ Fuentes, ex champ Bramble, 27-0 Pineda, two division champ Mayweather, ex champ Jake Rodriguez, 40-1 Angel Hernandez 26-1 Pedro Sanchez and prison hard Hector Lopez in their first 15 fights. Joe Louis doesn't even come close. Loma? And what happened?

 

Well when Loma fought Salido he was overweight Salido came into the fight as a Welterweight weighing 147 pounds in a fight scheduled at Featherweight. So realistically Loma was fighting against a fighter 3 or 4 weightclasses bigger than him and Salido was allowed to low blow all night long.

Also Salido was still a world class Featherweight he went on to have 2 very memorable FOTY candidates vs Roman Martinez, Francisco Vargas, who were world class fighters.

In comparison Laporte was washed up at that time and no longer world class he was a stepping stone at that point.

Bramble hadn't be relevant since 1985 and he basically turned into journeyman/gatekeeper after that.

Solid names for a fighter with minimal professional fights ? yeah. But with the amount of amateur experience Tszyu had almost 300 amateur fights. It's not too surprising he quickly stepped up his opposition against notable names who were at that time gatekeeper level fighters at stage in their careers.

For example look at the fighter who fought Crawford recently only 11 professional fights but he went tooth and nail with him in a very competitive fight based on his extensive amateur career. You'll seeing alot more of this in the modern era especially from the eastern european fighters.

I think overall Tszyu has some solid wins my issue is I don't think he has alot of upper echelon wins and he has a pretty glaring loss in his prime to a fighter who is good but not elite.

 

Are you really going to nitpick Tszyu fighting an ex champ, a guy who had recently been extremely competitive with ATG Azumah Nelson, in his FOURTH FIGHT? I don't know where to even go from there.

On my run in the rain, I was thinking about this and Oscar had a similar route, and similar amateur success. And similarly lost. And as far as the quality of Phillips, he was a known underachiever for years. His talent and abilities were never in doubt. Reminds me somewhat of a guy named Buster Douglas in that regard. When fighters are capable of being fast tracked like Kostya, their flaws are often not addressed. It is not unusual. Nor is it disqualifying from greatness. See: Joe Louis, Mike Tyson....

 

I'm not nitpicking anything you're mentioning the names without mentioning the context that they were at in their careers.

Fighters like Laporte, Bramble, were shopworn and basically gatekeepers at that stage in their careers. I've already gave Tszyu credit for the wins taking into account the amount of professional fights he had. But he also had a very extensive amateur career and was probably fighting some fighters in the amateurs that were better than some of the professional fighters he fought early on and that's the same for fighters like Usyk.

As I said Tszyu has some solid wins but he doesn't have a real upper echelon win his best win is vs Zab Judah. And the other real notable names he fought like Chavez were way past their sell by date so I can't give him much credit for that win.

To me Tszyu is very good/low tier great but I think he falls short of fighters like ODLH, Mosley, Trinidad, who were the prominent fighters in his era.

 

Honestly, I don't think we are that far apart in this estimation. Totally reasonable to have him half a step behind this group.

His early ledger is just deeper than those above, even Oscar.

If you look at Tszyu's entire record, it's overwhelmingly A-/B+ opponents. Very few, if any, soft touches. Just all quality. Quantity has a quality all its own at this point.

 

I agree with you on that i understand what you're saying now you're saying throughout his career there was never any period in his career where he took a series of easy fights. That in itself is quite impressive if you look at that way and to be honest that does give me a different perspective on his career.

 

He was matched hard early as you would expect of a no longer young, vastly experienced amatuer great, though some of those guys like Laporte and Bramble were just typical faded, aging stepping stones by then, as you would expect any well matched prospect to face... I don't argue against that, and no one would have begrudged him a loss in one of those non-title fights, or even too much if he'd lost to Rodriguez (though Rodriguez was a limited enough fighter he might not get away with it depending on manner of loss); but his schedule had long levelled out by the time he lost to Phillips with plenty of time for recovery between every fight.

I'm sorry, but I just don't find two/three fights a year schedule over two and a half years vs Rodriquez, well past prime Mayweather, Pineda, Corey Johnson, Bergman, and Leonardo Mas to be some uncommon treadmill/murderers row for the era that offers up all that is needed to explain a loss. If that was the case, there'd hardly be a loss during that decade we couldn't just attribute to fatigue and facing too much back to back quality. To me, that's an undemanding (assuming a very good champion) list of average to decent opponent splinter-belt era run.

 

It's well documented that Hamed already had one foot out the door when he fought Barrera. He had to crash a ton of weight during camp and had several operations on his hands which by that point were Calzaghe'esque in their level of fragility towards the tail end of his career.

I think the best Hamed was right at the start of his title career and much like Hatton, once he tasted success, he found it increasingly hard to maintain focus and discipline.

 

Is that a 'past prime' or a poorly disciplined fighter?

 

Tszyu is both better and greater than Hamed, IMO.

Hamed's flair was more than just a little laced with carelessness. Tszyu, on the other hand, was the antithesis of poor discipline and, pound-for-pound, he demonstrated much more in terms of craft.

I prefer Tszyu's ledger, as well.

 

Hamed had a better career and was much more of a h2h standout. People are just saying Tszyu because they like him and dislike Hamed.

 

Maybe - what’s your case for Hamed? I’m not really a career evaluator type of guy but I’d be interested to see a pro Prince take here.