Your Hottest Takes:

Hardly. Counting rounds it was something like 7-5. Whitaker won his rounds more emphatically but not 10-8 emphatically.

Moreso, in the bigger picture, this fight was 9 years almost to the day after Julio won his first title, at a weight limit that was his best, a full 17 pounds lighter. And no matter what one says, 87 fights is 87 fights and takes a toll.

Sweat Pea was a nice little fighter, a bit gimmicky, but probably good enough for the HOF.

 

some of my hot takes:

-RJ would've always had problems w/ a Cuellar trained Glen Johnson. From the outside, Johnson had a longer reach & made better use of his jab, & he was a better infighter @ close quarters. Cuellar mapped out a great gameplan for Johnson that never got the credit it deserved IMO.

-Lomachenko is a great fighter, but he rates on the lower tier of the greatness scale.

-Benitez was @ his peak @ 154. Even though he may have lost a step in speed, he was getting better placement & power on his punches than ever before & had become an adept bodypuncher. (In retrospect, this should make sense given that he was now a mature adult & no longer a teenager as he was down @140).

-Dwight Qawi on the night of the Saad rematch would've been no less than 50-50 vs. any LHW in history not ranked among the all-time upper echelon.

-Cuevas would've been no less than 50-50 vs. any ww not rated among the all-time 20-25.

 

Supposedly from what I've been able to find records about it are spotty at best and he was never the best fighter is his era so idk

 

Debatable Whitaker has better wins Chavez had a better reign so depends on what you value I can see it either way

 

I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that Bob Foster and his legacy as a great LHW is overplayed. "Oh, but the POWER!" Yeah, whatever. Defending against the likes of most of his LHW opposition will put many good fighters in a position to enhance their stature. Good? Certainly. Powerful? You bet. Just not as great a fighter as is made out. Not enough good competition to elevate him to the point many seem to.

If a person gushes over heavyweights and has little to say about better fighters in lower weights (and most of them are, by definition) and spends all their time talking about heavyweight this and heavyweight that, I think less of them. That probably says more about me than boxing honestly, but who cares. I own that, and that's what I think.

The 80's were the last great era in boxing. It's gone wayward since. Not sure how controversial that is.

Arturo Gatti was not a bad fighter. Technically, I mean. Nor was Ray Mancini. "Technique" means more than being a stylish, elusive boxer. Some good technical fighters get hit, because their style demands it. Don't confuse style with technique. They're different things.

Whitaker decisions Duran at 135.

 

I agree but I'd reckon boxing loses more great fighters to rugby on average. Rugby is both a more physical and more international sport, I think there's probably more rugby players inclined towards violence than there are basketball players inclined towards violence. And rugby players nowadays are all massive and plenty would fit in nicely at HW.

 

Hagler is overrated
Liston and Vitali are ridiculously overrated by this forum
Benavidez wouldve knocked out Froch and Calzaghe
Thommy Hearns wouldve beaten any other Welterweight in history the night he lost to Sugar Ray
Joe Louis loses to everyone in todays top 10
Sugar Ray Robinsons skills were basic by todays standards
Ali losing to Leon Spinks is a massive blemish on his career which should be brought up more as a negative. (And dont give me the parkinsons excuse cause he won the immediate rematch anyway)
Sugar Ray Leonard wouldve beaten Duran in the rematch and the not enough time to prepare excuse has been greatly exaggerated.
Duran is not a g-d hes human and would almost always lose to Hagler, Hearns and Leonard
Ward beat Kovalev legitimately in their first fight.
De La Hoya is a better pound for pound fighter than Hagler (not sure if this is controversial)
Chavez is overrated; Canelo is the best Mexican fighter of all time
Wilder is underrated in head to head fights on this forum
Leonard beat Hagler easily. At least 8-4 maybe even 9-3
Beterbiev steamrolls Michael Spinks
If it wasnt for Anthony Joshua the heavyweight division wouldnt be relevant and even with Fury and Usyk it would feel more like the Klitschko era. Anthony Joshua is the most important boxer of this era in that sense.
GGG was overrated even though he shouldve gotten credit for wins in the first 2 Canelo fights.
The 10-9 scoring in boxing is outdated.

 

What about MMA?

 

I don't think this should be that controversial. Saddler after all won 3 out of their 4 fights, all 3 by the way of stoppage. Some will claim that Pep was not the same fighter after the injury he sustained in a plane crash, but he returned to the ring just 5 months after the crash. He won 26 consecutive fights until he was KO'd by Saddler in 1948. He then went on an 18 fight winning streak until he was again stopped by Saddler. Another 8 fight winning streak until he was stopped by Saddler in their final encounter. I think Pep's alleged diminished abilities tend to get exaggerated and that Saddler simply had Pep's number.

 

I'm sure boxing does lose a lot of potentially great fighters to MMA. I'm still of the belief that boxing requires more skill overall than MMA but I very well could be wrong. A sizeable amount of world-ranked MMA fighters aren't particularly good at throwing punches and rely on wrestling instead so I'm not sure how good they'd be at boxing if they had trained that instead, especially when they're given ample opportunity to learn how to box for their own profession and still ignore it. Even a lot of the best boxers in the UFC are simply guys who can throw a jab like Sean Strickland, who isn't too much of a boxer outside of his admittedly very clean jab. Ilia Topuria has some lovely punching technique though.
MMA remains a pretty niche sport to my knowledge though compared to something like rugby even if it is probably just as international if not moreso since countries which produce smaller are better represented in MMA than rugby.

 

Hearns beats Barkley most times prime for prime, context matters, the first fight was a lucky punch and his legs were shot in the rematch, he got away with it against Hill because Hill wasn’t a guy to impose size and pressure guys, Hearns could just sit on the outside and outjab him, Barkley exposed that his legs were shot in the rematch.
Prime for prime, I think Hearns wins 7-8 out of 10 times at 160lbs.

 

As someone who watches MMA the level of fighters in boxing is much higher then MMA

 

I don't watch it. I just follow a few of the fighters here and there.

 

Trust me if MMA fighters could make it in boxing they would have gone into boxing. MMA fighters are usually guys who couldn't make it in boxing

 

Theres probably no MMA fighters who would be top tier in boxing. If they could they would. Simple as that. The pay is higher.