Holyfield obviously comes to mind here. Any more examples? *No mention of Leonard-Duran here please. That's one discussion I've truly had enough of.
I watched Jiro Watanabe-Gustavo Ballas recently and that was a weird fight. Watanabe, such a good out-fighter repeatedly closed the distance to no end (tired, looked undertrained to me) and Ballas, who was doing well inside and getting thrashed outside started many rounds like he wanted to box and move. Crazy.
Minter early in his career, got involved too much for someone with dodgy skin. Sorted his discipline out, won the title and then forgot how he became champ for the Hagler ight.
Antuofermo where he stopped in the last few rounds, mugabi where he got in a fight with him where he could have boxed Hagler is one of my faveourites but he wwasnt the best tactician
I don't know too much about Ruiz in general, but I think his non-fight against Jones was embarassing. True, Jones was one of the best at bewildering opponents and making them look bad, but Ruiz fight plan was pretty straight forward given his big size advantage. He just had to move continually forward behind a jab/double jab to the chest and work almost exclusively to the body to begin with to stand a pretty good chance. Sure, he would have taken some shots coming in, but if he wasn't prepared to take two punches to land one (at least to start with) he had no business being in the rings with Jones. He actually tried to box with him for large parts of the fight. Madness.
to be fair to Hagler it wasnt so much tactics it was exhaustion against Antuofermo but he put too much into the first few rounds IMO when he should have started off slow and tried for a big final push
There have been tons of them; How about a guy like Kevin Rooney trying to outslug Arguello? Or Holyfield trying to box Chris Byrd on the outside? Cooney utilizing his boxing prowess in there against Mike Spinks. Quarry trying to out-tough Frazier not once but twice.