For those of you who have not been believing that Naseem Hamed went to all bounds to avoid having to fight Juan Manuel Marquez.......Emmanuel Steward who was involved in training and advising Hamed, admitted it last night...... Steward admitted to advising Hamed to stay the hell away from Juan Manuel Marquez because his counterpunching style was all wrong for him. ......must have made Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant and the higher up's at HBO cringe, as their contention was that Marquez had been offered the Hamed fight but refused it. ......everyone that followed the sport back then knew that HBO had a hand in helping Hamed avoid Marquez....and it just brought a smile to my face that Emmanuel fessed up and told the truth......"Marquez was all wrong for Hamed." ......and lets be real here people, any crude come foward fighter is easy pickings for a counterpuncher like Marquez.
This has been discussed at nauseum here at ESB...... .......not only did the lowball offer Marquez, but more important than that, after months and months of Hamed avoiding Marquez, I'm sure Hamed and HBO who had an interest that Hamed do well, were embarrased that Hamed was avoiding Marquez. The print boxing media was writing about it back then..... What HBO did to have them and Hamed save some face was to make Marquez a lowball offer.....the reason however that Marquez never even considered it was because it was evident that the offer was'nt credible..... ....they were giving Marquez less than a month notice to get in shape and be ready.atsch A fighter going into a big fight needs 2 months to get in fighting shape......they were giving Marquez less than a months notice to be ready.:-( In other words, the offer was made knowing full well that Marquez was going to reject the offer. HBO made their offer public well after it was made, for the sole reason to hype Hamed, as it had been circulating he was cherry picking his opponents. People forget or simply dont realize that MAB was actually a cherry picked opponent by Hamed. MAB who had previously lost ot Erik Morales was deemed to small by most to beat Hamed. MAB in facing Hamed was moving up from Superbantam to fight who most considered a big featherweight in Hamed. Hamed went into the MAB fight with the thinking he was just going to run over the smaller MAB, but he found out pretty quickly that doing that to a skill fighter was'nt as easy as he thought.
HMMMMMMMMmmmmmm... I don't know.... not only Steward is a "shot" trainer, but he has shown signs of bad senility lately.... Steward has also done this b4 (dissing his own fighters, specially after their loss). It happened with Taylor and with Cintron... I wonder why they left him?!?!? I've lost all respect 4 Steward and feels like **** that Cotto is with him. Steward should retire with some dignity.... even his commenting ,last thing to leave a trainer, has gone to **** (watch the full 1 1/2 rds. of SM-PW)...
Sucks that choosing Barrera made Barreras stock go ^ But they did that to choose the lesses skilled mexican and still backfired. It would have done wonders for JMM"s career. Oh well.
Yep.......had Marquez being Hamed's mandatory for so long been given his rightful opportunity at Hamed.......all roads for MAB and Morales who were climbing to 126 lbs at the time would have led to Marquez...... .....but instead, Hamed cherrypicked MAB, and when MAB beat Hamed, MAB did'nt want Hamed's title because he would be forced to fight JMM. MAB cited that he was'nt a true featherweight and would likely drop back down to 122 lbs after the Hamed fight, but MAB changed his mind when JMM publicly stated, "I can make 122 lbs, I'll fight MAB there. .......instead MAB sought out and made a rematch with Morales at featherweight, the same weight in which MAB had said he was too small for when the name Marquez had been mentioned to him.:!: ......but indeed, Hamed ducking Marquez changed the course of history at 126 lbs......had that not happened Marquez would have ruled that division with an iron fist.
WTF? JMM had a great showing in his last fight and all of a sudden he is GOAT GTFO! Now everybody in history was avoiding this guy. atsch
Have you seen Hamed fight? I don't really see a "Crude come forward fighter", although to be fair to you, I'm not really sure how I want to describe it myself. Hamed was extremely unconventional but never really crude as I see it.
Marquez was offered the fight for career high money, he had bad management that refused it, they also refused an immediate Pacquaio rematch because they wanted more money and instead lost his titles to Chris John for a mere 30k. It didn't help that Marquez ran into and lost to the slick Norwood around that time. Marquez needed to do what Judah did against Spinks and take a tiny slice of the pie for a big reward if he won
Bull****!!! We all know that Marquez was the most feared man at the time. Nobody wanted to fight him...NOBODY!!!
Dont forget about the part where he was offered a career high payday against Erik Morales but priced himself out.
So because Steward said it, it's now a fact? It's not like Steward is biased about some fighters that he says **** that's not even close to being real (watch Martinez vs Williams for example)...