ESB Cl VS Gen: Greatest Defensive Fighter of all time:

Corro was appalling against Vito(so was Vito for much of the fight)and seemed to just give up towards the end of the fight.I think it's that fight that turned a lot of people off him.Other than that, he had looked a decent, but unspectacular safety first fighter, bland as you say, but not offensive to watch.Then came the Vito bout...

Harris was certainly his best performance.Though it looked to me that Ronnie choked badly in the hostile Argentinian surroundings.He hardly threw any punches and pulled a Mustafa vs Scott sort of performance.

 

There are different types of defensive ability to take into consideration.

Dulio Loi may have been a volume puncher but he seemed quite sound defensively, and was tough to catch with anything that resembled a clean, flush shot. Ditto Dwight Qawi.At his best, Saoul Mamby demonstrated this ability as well, although he wasn't as aggressive or probably as talented as Loi was. Eusebio Pedroza was damned eleusive when he wanted to be, too, even when working in close quarters. And Ricardo Lopez was, if not ungittable, then at the very least quite sound defensively even when moving forward, which made it tough for an opponent to catch him with a meaningful shot.

 

As a result of how he folded against Antofermo, he was retroactively lambasted as a poor champion, and making a title match with Vito into a snoozer demonstrated a very peculiar talent. (Everybody I knew regarded Antuofermo as an exciting fighter, so they blamed Corro for the poor display of both.) But he was certainly watchable enough to have his previous title fights televised.

A perfect contrast to a genuine ATG like Arguello, who thought nothing about going onto the turf of a wildly popular opponent and trashing him.

 

agree with you there you could also add Roberto Duran there one of the best ever at combining defence and offence.

This leads on nicely to a point i was away to make before reading this post.

What makes a 'good' defence?

Is it the ability of not getting hit. If so Locche is definitly the best at this he seemed near impossible to catch and looked like (and probably was) he wasnt he even trying. He just seemed to be able to see the shot and move but his defence never really set him up for anything and he made the guy miss but rarely followed up with anything so was the defence effective.

Now someone like Benitez and Pep made the guys miss brillaintly and countered brillaintly, now they may not have been better defensivly than Locche (who i think in terms of just pure defence is the best) but they were more effective.

So who really had a better defence?

 

There is the old saying that a good defense is a good offense. Not only was Pernell Whitaker hard to hit, he was good at putting his hands on his opponents as well. Whitaker has a rather high output off a top notch jab.

Whitaker was hard to hit, but he also made his opponents pay for missing; making his opponents more reluctant to throw as the fight went on.

 

all time i don't know. but of the options mentioned : just see toney's record.
so many times undersized , out of shape , fat / drained , so many fights but still unstopped.
but i think a fight with some klitschko / tua may make him stopped.

 

Out of respect for Cus DaMato, perhaps the greatest genius of boxing, Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom deserves mention in this post as he was the defensive fighter Cus always cited.
Pep had to be incredible though, remember Joe Louis favored watching him over Ray Robinson...Reason Joe?

"Willie don't get hit"