Pendleton despite having a record of 47-26-5 (34 KO) managed to earn a title and defend it several times. In his first 25 fights he lost 12 of them. However after that point he began to improve beating Roger Mayweather, Bramble, and Spann. He deserves a lot more respect his fight against Ruelas was a very good fight in its own right.
Pendelton does get a lot of respect, despite/because of the start of his career, Freddie became a tough honest fighter and deservedly got the Whitaker fight; as he had shown he was the clearly the second best 135lber of the time.
At his peak, he was a skilled boxer with a quick and powerful right hand. He spoiled the comeback efforts of fighters like Bramble, Mayweather, Jorge Paez, and Tony Lopez. His fight with Lopez is one of the best ever, a sadly overlooked classic: [yt]_p2ppa7N-6k[/yt] [yt]uI_wxiBK3xA[/yt] [yt]aGvZmnNcZaM[/yt] The consensus description of Pendleton was always as "a good fighter with a so-so record."
Yeah, it took Freddie a while to kind of discover that right hand, or to throw it with any degree of frequency, but once he did, he became a very dangerous fighter to face inside the ring when he was at his best. Gave Whitaker a pretty stern challenge when Sweet Pea was at his absolute peak.
Freddie reminded me of another fighter who didn't have a great record, but was a decent fighter-Dennis Andries.
It's a quality fight, but why was Pendleton so inconsistent? He had the ability to look quality at times. Put his shots together well with speed and power. He's like Randall Bailey times 5.
Tons of respect for Freddie. I think he was kind of thrown to the wolves early in his career but kept improving. As I recall he gave Whitaker as good a fight as just about anybody else could at that time. Plus he spectacularly sparked all-time douche bag Roger Mayweather. Love this guy. The KO of Trice is good too.
I came into this thread with the sole purpose of hyping/promoting Lopez vs Pendleton and My2sense had it covered. That's great.