Random Boxing Beliefs You've Made Your Mind Up On

We don't score fights based on 2-3 rounds. Especially not in a 15 round fight.

 

Louis < Ali

 

What a coincidence, I thought about this just yesterday and would actually take it a step further:

Defence first fighters are overrated defensively relative to their more well rounded, defensively talented but offensively minded peers.

Defence to me isn't just avoiding offence, it's reducing offence. Avoiding 100 punches 80% of the time is a worse net outcome than avoiding 50 punches 70% of the time.

A lot of ATG Defensive Fighters are very good at avoiding a relatively high number of punches, but their opponent isn't particularly concerned about what comes back and have little incentive to be cautious offensively besides stamina concerns. This high punch output reduces the defensive fighters margin for error.

Meanwhile a lot of offensive fighters that are just considered "good" defensively are not as good at plain avoiding punches, but considerably better at reducing the punch output of their opponents, meaning they actually end up taking less damage because their ability to counter naturally reduces their opponents punch output.

It's why I consider someone like prime RJJ to be better defensively than prime James Toney. Slickly avoiding 19/20 bombs and then relying on your chin to tank the one you couldn't avoid whilst sitting idly in the pocket is a worse display of defensive ability than being such a threat to knock someone TFO that they don't throw a power punch in the worst place.

RJJ famously won a round without getting hit once, but what people forget to mention is that RJJ only had to avoid 5 punches in that round, a round that ended with him busting Vinny Pazienza's nose.

People like Loche, Toney or Pep aren't offensively gifted enough to get such a pass on defence.

Technical skill is a part of ability, but athleticism is another, and if your athletic advantages are so overwhelming that you supercede the need for technical skills then it is what it is. You shouldn't get points for being more skilled if your skills aren't more effective than talent. Likewise, you shouldn't be considered a better defensive fighter than someone who gets hit less than you just because it takes you more effort to get the same or worse results.

 

Makes a good deal of sense.

 

I think that's starting to create issues where none really exists and creating a bit of an exaggerated strawman out of "ATG defensive fighters"...I dunno, unless maybe the quality of understanding of the sport dropped heavily over the last decade or something. Before that, most boxing fans DID rate fighters holistically and recognise that it's more difficult to make someone miss the more relentlessly aggressive you are.

That's usually taken as a given, but it doesn't mean we can't break things down into discussions of different aspects of the sport. so when people talk about someone being great defensively/a top defensive fighter, they're usually considering the technical and athletic concerns related directly to the defensive side of the sport, as individually coached throughout the decades. Having to consider some pseudo-abstract notion that maybe the guy with huge power and only average technical skill, or the unorthodox athlete with blazing speed might actually be the superior defensive fighter because their offensive and/or athletic qualities make them at least difficult to engage and land on anyway usually isn't what is on peoples minds, but it isn't discounted either when discussion on who is the better overall fighter comes in imo.

Besides, every fighter is on a spectrum of offensive focus to defensive focus, there's not this seperate category of "defensive fighters" who get extra points purely because of technical skill and making fighters miss; literally doesn't exist historically in the sport for the practical purposes of judging a fight. It's a sport where you win by punching people in the face and body. Most of the better fighters at making people miss throughout history were also at the very least in possession of solid offensive talent, just as most of the best fighters with more aggressive boxer-puncher/pressure/swarming were at least solid defensively. being able to recognise that fighters need to strike some sort of effective balance technically and also ideally need other strong basic traits like power/athleticism is what any beginner fan of the sport should be able to do.

Toney in his prime at 160/168 is a good example of being used as a strawman here...he wasn't some over-defensive caricature, he was a well-balanced boxer-puncher that usually had a good workrate and a very good offensive arsenal. i'd say his defence wasn't that much better, or focused on, than his offence. That's what got him his p4p acclaim...not people jerking off over excessive defensive moves. His issue was not an unbalanced style in favour of defence, it was that he increasingly lacked dedication out of the ring and became more and more prone (mostly after the Jones humiliation, but with a few earlier examples too) to overreliance on his durablity and defensive skill, and offensive counterpunching up close to mitigate the fact he wasn't in top shape...and fans didn't literally give him a pass, most stopped considering him a great fighter and even his late comeback often came with plenty of pointing out of his drawbacks.

Locche is really the only highly-lauded defensive stylist with a decent amount of footage available that had a distinctly unbalanced style in terms of intentionally, consistently from fight to fight focusing on defence and not taking many punching opportunities just so he could make fighters miss and was arguably unfairly rewarded for it in his home fights.

 

Sometimes a ref has to help a heavyweight fight be a heavyweight fight

Examples: Eddie cotton in lewis- Tyson, and Randy Newman in ruiz- golota

 

I agree with your post, except for this little bit. Unlike Locche & Pep, Toney was just as good offensively as he was defensively. Nobody could just unload on him without fear of the sharp counters that would come back. He was never afraid to mix it up, & would stand right in front of his opponents in the pocket exchanging blows will being extremely slippery. He may not have had the explosive power of Roy, but he definitely had solid punching power, as no one could just walk through his punches (even at HW).

 

Robs aggression is more accurate I think.

 

Locche was a different beast. His skill in reading the slightest instant of a muscle twitch and knowing exactly what was going to be thrown and where was just insane.

 

True. I'm always relaxed after sex, even with myself.

 

Two quick addendums.

1. Mentioning Toney was unfair tbf. For whatever reason when I was typing that I was actually thinking of / getting annoyed by the thoughts of heavyweight Toney lol. I concede your point on that.

2. Good offence + good defence is a more effective way of reducing harm than mediocre offence + incredible defence, is my takeaway. If you think I'm being reductionist by ignoring the role of technical defensive skills and manoeuvres then I feel like this statement is a more accurate and less inflammatory version of my thoughts.

 

I have a billion, but a noteworthy one is i believe the slanderous accusations of Marciano's sexual deviancy after his retirement were made up and baseless, just basically made to sell stories. I remember close people to him denying it strongly and claiming he really was a notably good man.

Also i have suspicions about Ali and Tyson's islam, whether or not they are actually muslim i mean. I am rather confident that Tank Davis is a fake muslim. Actually the religions beliefs of most boxers tend to be shallow.

 

Hmmmm,kinda,as a Muslim you got to pray often and Mike didn't, Ali's beliefs were complicated,he switched from different versions of islams faster than his shuffle,no Muslim kept the same attitude and looks like Tank.