Were does Virgil Hill rank amongst the Light Heavy Weights

When a guy came to fight Virgil. Virgil had the title and that guy was going to be world champ if he won regardless of saying paper champion or whatever. Virgil is underrated. If you go by what are diluted facts, most everything Pacman has done recently has been diluted by catchweights and fighting handpicked opponents. Any fighter can be diminished using those standards. I have said in other threads how the catchweights are going to ruin boxing as all the boxing commissions have. You cannot have a catchweight when fighting for a legit title. It goes against the concept of being the best at that weight division. But Arum and others (Sugar Ray Leonard in 1988- put themselves above boxing.

 

he had a solid top notch reign and his title defenses are proof that he was consistent and trained hard and was a legit world champion, regardless of the losses to Hearns,Jones.

 

When comparing across era's you can't claim he had the world championship for 21 defences. There were other men in that division with similar paper belts and it wasn't until hill fought maske that a new champion was decided. In era's containing lightheavyweights from yesteryear there could only ever be one champ.

Well pac is certainly not an 8 weight champion but he has been a world champion in 4 divisions. Catchweights have happened god knows how many times throughout history. And if fighting someone ranked in the top 5 is hand picking then that's happened loads of times throughout history also.

 

How good was the guy Hopkins handpicked? I agree there should be one champion, but I do admit that out of the guys Virgil won his title in 1987, Virgil outlasted the other guys. Virgil won his title in Sept of 87., He won it from Stewart.. Hearns had beaten Andries in March 1987, and if I remember correctly Lalonde won the WBC title and Czyz was IBF near the time Virgil beat Stewart. Now looking at the resume Hill later beat Czyz and Lalonde just for argument sake. None of them beat Spinks, so if you look at who fought more top rated guys and outlasted anyone it was Hill. I think he is underrated. big time. There was a unification talked about in October of 1990, but when Hearns came into the picture and beat Hill everything changed. I do believe Hill would have beaten Williams and Moorer.

 

Virgil Hill two years ago. He looks a little punch drunk [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzVI58oM0yI[/ame]

 

you think that is bad. I didn't know Virgil took punches but he is slurring. Too bad. A great fighter. These guys don't know when to quit. [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX2SuQuWKCo&feature=related[/ame] check out 45 seconds in this video

 

He doesn't...

 

Rather than bang on about the number i'm unhappy with i'll outline my view of him.

He was the number one for a while without beating his closest rivals. He lost to a great fighter in hearns so we can discount it. He again rose to the top, outlasting the other top contenders or belt holders until eventually the wbc guy vacated and there was only him and maske left and ofcourse he unified successfully. I think the two best lightheavyweights he fought were dm and jones, both beat him and effectively took him out of the next gen of lightheavyweights. He had a good campaign at cruiserweight as a swansong.

He's not helped by the lack of big fights in the division between 85 and 95 but as you say he did outlast the others and even tho the timing wasn't always ideal he did beat a good bunch of the guys from that decade.

I think the best way to describe him is "solid but unspectacular".

 

I liked Hill as a fighter...and I would prefer not to conjecture about his chances with the top 10 or 15 lightheavies of history, all of which would have beaten him.

 

Higher than Bob Foster , lower than Roid Jones , Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson .

 

You need to share some that stuff you're smoking.atsch

 

so Foster is lower than Tarver and Johnson? I don't know about that.

 

Really, that's beyond ludicrous.

 

very good post. Yes I think his consistency was something he should have been given credit for. His right hand was always a little pathetic, which was why he never went to higher levels I think. Maybe his style centered too much around his left hand of jabbing up and down and waiting for the left hook counter, but he outboxed good guys. I agree with DM and Jones, but they were near the end of his prime.

 

I think Foster is better than Hill and then Tarver is next and Johnson barely in the equation.