Who can beat Monzon?

Jones, Hopkins and SRR are the 3 i'd give a very good chance.

 

hagler would have the best chance

 

I think Leonard has the style, ability and greater boxing skill to give Monzon fits and please don't bring up a 34yo 5'7 natural LW in Napoles to say that style wouldn't be problematic. Leonard would be the fastest, best mover and slickest boxer Monzon would have ever met

 

If boxing has proven one thing throughout its long and illustrious history is that no one is unbeatable and that includes Monzon. Look at all the great MW's there have been. To say that none of them could beat Monzon is pure folly. Greb, Walker, Tiger, Fullmer, Flowers, Robinson, Hagler could certainly take Carlos on any given day and the opposite is true as well. Monzon was an ATG no doubt. But he did feast on generally smaller men. What if he met a taller fellow who combied skill and power like Robinson? Or a tall man who could punch like Hearns? Or a complete fighter with a cast iron chin like Hagler? Or a whirlwind like Greb or the smooth southpaw that beat him twice like Flowers? In my opinion there have been too many stellar MW champions over the years to say that Monzon was unbeatable. No one is unbeatable.

 

Technician? That would imply a complicated, textbook style. Monzon was only roughly textbook and his physical methods were quite simple.

 

Well, he had a great jab and punch variety, and was very skilled at slipping and picking off punches. I don't really see that as being "simple." His first fight with Benvenuti was as impressive an exhibition of skill as any I've seen.

 

The first Nino fight Carlos just beat the poor guy up.

How good Nino actually was can be questioned when he had his 3 fight
2-1 series with Griffith, was beaten by Tom Bethea, lost in an overweight fight to Dick Tiger, won by DQ over Frasier Scott, and won very late on a one-punch k.o. over Luis Rodriquez who was leading in the fight.

All of this occurred before Nino got smoked by Monzon.

 

you say its china chinned but number 1, jones was very hard to hit in his prime, although lou de valle found it and numbjer 2, jones didnt get koed till he got old and was at light heavywieght, you talking about a young middleweight jones. jones never fought a guy like monzon but monzon never fought a guy quite like jones either

 

A great technician is Archie Moore. Someone who had a true range of skills which were thought about and then rehearsed to the point of becoming natural reflexes. Moore, in comparison to Carlos Monzon, had a much fuller and ambitious skill set.

That's not to say Monzon was any less a fighter - just that he was more one dimensional. It just so happens that Monzon's one dimension - lean back, one-two, lean back, one-two - was extremely effective. Of course, he used many other techniques, but was not 'technical.' He was just gifted with terribly accurate fists and uncanny timing.

 

my name...

 

His speed, reflexes and shitty opposition (other than Toney and Hopkins) masked the fact that he had a glass jaw...who the hell would you give a pass to like that, to be ko'ed so coinclusively? Lennox Lewis? Well, at least aginst McCall he got up before "10"....When did Jones ever ride a round after being really tagged, like Monzon, Ali or Holmes just to name a few did? No..he just got ko'ed..no getting up and shaking it off like Holmes did vs Shavers and Snipes...guys like Monzon, and at lightheavyweight, Bob Foster would have been his undoing...and probably Michael Spinks..not to mention any other heavyweights he may have dared tried out besides Ruiz, that is.

 

Totally agree on the McLellan point, totally.

 

Pretty damned effective defense Monzon had...more so than many other esteemed technicians..100 fights? No ko defeats? Pretty much unmarked at the end of his career? It's either a great, though unheralded defense or his chin ranked up there with the guys that get most of the "chin acclaim"..namely Hagler, LaMotta, Ali, etc., If Monzon fails the "technician test", then there is much to be said for simplicity and subtlety.

 

Well, exactly. His truly elite ability for my money was timing. The timing to lean back from a punch and the timing to counter. As far as boxing goes, it was flawless. How many times did you see Monzon land the smooth one-two? More times than any other fighter I've seen. Of course, there was more to his game than that - he'd eat up a steamrolling Briscoe with volleys of loose but accurate hooks and uppercuts - but primarily he was as simple as a great fighter can be.

 

That as well, and I'd say he gets the same 'acclaim'.