Lester hit the nail on the head. Sanch' could gain respect with a sharp counter and carried his dig late, but not a big puncher at all.
Wilfredo Gomez was an anomaly. Even after that, nobody considered Sanchez a big puncher that I'm aware of, especially in comparison to the man he dethroned. Gomez was far and away his fastest stoppage win at the world championship level. Cumulative counter-punching was his thing. He wasn't going to produce a single punch knockout off the ropes like Cervantes was known to do, however.
Comparable to Hagler p4p, both accumulation counter punchers. Both didn't have much one shot power so to say, but knew how to deliver.
I disagree Hagler when he sat down on his shots like against Sibson, Hamsho and Vito the second time really did damage snapped people's head right back. Sanchez didn't have much power at all but awesome accuracy, good speed and timing and threw alot of punches.
I disagree. I think Sanchez is underrated as a puncher, especially as someone who carried it later in his fights. He may not have had one punch KTFO power, but he had one punch put you on ***** street/put you on your ass power. Quite heavy-handed. A bigger puncher than someone like Marquez, no doubt.
I'm with Bujia on this one; I think he was a very good, underrated puncher at world level. Looking at his title reign, for example, and the fighters that went the distance with him: you have Cowdell, Ford and Castillo who were all very tricky matchups for him to say the least and who all got hit much less than most of his other opponents; you have the poor, coasting performance against Garcia where Sal looked as though he was just going through the motions. And you have Laporte, who was absolutely nails. I think Saldivar hit a shade harder than him but that Sanchez hit a notch harder at feather than any of the trinity, though Marquez might run him close in that regard.
For whatever it's worth, Danny Lopez did say, "It wasn't one punch which hurt more than the others. All of them did!" [For the knockdowns he did sustain, prime Little Red's chin was underrated. Sal never had him off his feet despite two tremendous batterings, and it only looked like Chacon had his senses seriously compromised at the end. Schoolboy was capable of monstrous power though, and landed all the hardest punches in his loss to Boza Edwards, an overlooked classic.]
