If there was no film on every ATG which boxer would be the toughest to beat?

Mike Tyson

I don't know how you prepare for that if you've never seen that


Deontay Wilder would be very hard too

 

Zelenhoff.

in all seriousness maybe some could be Tyson, Lomachenko, Calzaghe, Usyk himself, Hamed, RJJ they all for example had a fascinating way of operating. There's probably a lot of fighters who didn't achieve anywhere near as much because specific flaws could be exploited or effective game plans worked to nullify them and they didn't have the ceiling to compensate for that or to learn to grow and adjust their styles accordingly. Try to work Tyson out when you see him for the first time you'll be on the deck before you know what peek a boo means.

 

I'd imagine an unorthodox fighter.

If you are facing someone and you don't know how they fight, you have to learn and adapt as the fight goes on. If someone is great, but in a well known style (pressure fighter, counter puncher, tall and rangy fighting behind a long jab), you can kind of pick up on how they will fight pretty early on. You might not have faced this opponent before, but you would have probably faced their style. If someone fights in an unorthodox style, I'd imagine it would be harder to get a read on them and adapt.

Unorthodox fighters are a nightmare when you have seen them fight before. God knows what it would be like to fight one without any prior knowledge of their style.

Jones jr, Hamed, etc. Those types of fighters.

 

People may laugh, but Wilder is a good shout.

If you are a pro boxer and didn't know Wilder, and someone said to you that you are going to face a world champion boxer, the last thing you would expect is for said world champion to only throw straight right hands.

 

It also depends on the talent of the fighter to figure things out in the ring and break the opponent down, which all fighters do to an extent. What's that line, no plan survives first contact with the enemy or another everyone has a plan until they punched in the face. And would the stated opponents have any knowledge of that fighter in reverse?

 

Roy Jones too athletic and too unorthodox, unless you are a heavyweight or someone that has beaten top heavyweights like Holyfield, Spinks or Usyk then you have little chance against Captain Hook

 

This is an interesting question that I've never really considered. I agree that really athletic fighters with unorthodox styles and skills, like Pacquiao and Roy Jones, would be near the top of the list. They were already next to impossible to beat during their primes when every one one of their competitors had full access to their entire careers.

Also, guys who were capable of high-level tactical and stylistic adjustments during the course of the fight would have a big advantage. I mean, they already have a massive advantage, of course. But fighters get conditioned to patterns that they see in a high-stress situations even if they logically know in the back of their minds that their opponent can adapt because they've seen it in the past. That effect would be even more magnified when they have nothing else to go on. So, extremely skilled and adaptable fighters like Floyd Mayweather and Ray Leonard would also do very well under these conditions.

This effect would also benefit fighters who stayed disciplined and didn't underestimate any of their opponents even if they were unknown. Fighters like Andre Ward and Bernard Hopkins. It's a shame because up until last night, I would have considered Usyk one of those guys.

I don't know. I'd have to think about it more.