Pep is still ahead of his time. By which I mean, he looks better than everyone who is on film before him, and almost everyone after.
Don't you think Whitaker is genuinely comparable? I think Pep was better myself, but there's not a lot in it IMO.
A nice little clip of Pep. Pity we don't have more prime footage to show. I'm not that impressed with what is available, but most of it is when Willie was on the slide, so that's only to be expected. I wouldn't be that impressed with Whitaker if all I had to go by was snippets of his fights with Poli Diaz, Wilfredo Rivera, Diosbelys Hurtado, Oscar de la Hoya, Andrei Pestriaev and Felix Trinidad, which is about the equivalent of what we have on film of Willie Pep.
I think Pep is the more fluidly mobile ,but Pea was a genuinely great boxer.His defence was nigh on impregnable
simply amazing. But I've watched some Nico Locche fights lately, and for me he was more impresive in defensive masterity than Pep. Maybe it's because that higlights don't show the full class of Pep, any other good vids?
Another version of the highlight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvcwlV_1XUo Locche was amazing and definitely had the flashier moves of the two but he had very little if any footwork to speak of. There's not much footage of Pep but there isn't much footage of Locche either. What a shame.