Johnny Tapia gets ovverated because people have sympathy for the guy as result of his hard and difficult life. Look at his career with objectivity and you will see what I mean.
His fights with Ayala, Barrera, Medina, a WBA bantam title fight against someone I forgot the name of and a two or three more I forgot the names of as well.
with respect, i'll disagree about hand speed. calzaghe always had brilliantly fast hands and though tapia threw better, more fluid combinations with superior technique on pure SPEED calzaghe gets the nod. he was also pretty adaptable but that seems to be calzaghe fans word of the month: name one fight where he didn't fight the exact same way? name one fight where he didn't bounce in and out throwing rapid flurries to the head?
Romero was a good fighter...He was probably more complete than Kessler IMO and had more tricks in his bag. In that respect Tapia may have beaten the better fighter in terms of ability, though you wont see me argue that Kessler has the better record and credentials. I havent seen the Salazar bout either but apparently a stray elbow caused a pretty horrible injury on a young and slightly out of shape Romero...and that was the difference there. As for never regaining a world title again, he probably should have given his quality and the greater array of titles down in the lighter weights..but Im fairly certain Danny hit the sauce pretty hard after some kind of out of the ring issue, maybe anarci or ricardho could shed some light on that. I think his lack of success after Tapia had more to do with this than him lacking substance as a fighter, I found him a fairly well schooled boxer puncher with decent two hand power. Joe has done more and was more consistent than Johnny..I dont really see to much of an argument for Tapia being considered greater, he was the better overall fighter but not by much..in fact that may even be debatable.
see, i hear in kessler he "adapted" past the first 4 all the time. don't know, looked like the same calzaghe to me. just upped the pace a bit
I see that you are the few on this thread that actually know about Danny Romero. The kid was a beast at Fly and JB one of the biggest punching little guys ive ever seen. He simply lost his stride after the Tapia fight(heard he was a boozer) and you are spot on about his loss to Wilie Salazar. I heard a comment by Addie earlier about this fight and he spoke as if this in indication of Danny Romeros ring abilities. This was just another one of those things that happens to a young sensation who reads to many of his press clipping and comes in unprepared against an experienced vetran,(and yey he also got clipped by an elbow). THe comment by Addie is a prime example of basing your opinions on reading Boxing records. Danny did bring it together for one fight after the Tapia loss and ended up getting robbed against Vuyani Bungu at JF. You guys who discount Danny Romero as a great win,probably werent watching much boxing then. Everyone who knew boxing considered Danny Romero arguably the biggest puncher in boxing at the time. He was also the slight favorite over Tapia.
Yeah you did:yep And even more proof is that you didnt make a comeback:nono But dont bother Addie Ko1 Assasin:bbb
i'll admit, i wasn't watching a ton of boxing then and this thread is wonderfully informative to me about that era in bantam/junior bantams. but i can agree with you that the odds were damn near as close to even as you get and tapia certainly wasn't a big favourite by any stretch. it was almost the definition of a pick em fight